


What we have made along the way

by MarkShoe



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Complete, Post-Canon, also there are a few OCs that do nothing really, and of course a gratuitous self insert who's there for a couple pages, he also does nothing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-23 16:06:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 51,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8333872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkShoe/pseuds/MarkShoe
Summary: Min, who became a renowned scholar is doing research for her latest book. She needs to visit a number of libraries in different cities and Rand is all too happy to tag along.Takes place roughly fifty years after the Last Battle, so everyone is really old.Wonderful art was drawn for this fic (http://adurna0-art.tumblr.com/post/152343987266/my-submission-for-the-wot-big-bang-which-can-be) by Anna (http://adurna0.tumblr.com/)





	1. The few things that stayed the same

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the Wheel of Time Fandom big bang. 
> 
> As mentioned above this takes place half a century after the events of the series, so naturally some characters have died by the time this story starts and you bet I'm gonna talk about some of them. Just in case the "Main Character Death" warning was not enough because I will try and make it emotional (the key word here is try)

“I remember these.” Rand said with a faint smile while turning the flogger he found in the bedside table in his hand “I can’t believe they still put these in the rooms. I guess some things haven’t changed after all.”

“Yeah…” came the faint, half distracted reply from Min, who already found a chair in the balcony and opened one of the books she brought. He knew that once that happened she will soon be absorbed in the book, and will stay that way for a while.

They had arrived in Far Madding earlier that day, and before they even found an inn she had dragged him to the library. She was after a tome, the only known surviving copy of which was in the Far Madding’s central library. And typically, instead of just that one, she had checked out several other books, which she laid in a stack next to her that reached higher than the seat of her chair. At the moment she used that stack as an armrest and a table to write notation in a small paper on.

Rand walked out onto the balcony and leaned on the railing. An inn with five floors wasn’t that common, even in large cities like this one. They were lucky they could find a room in the fourth floor. Min liked to read in the open air and the balconies of ground and first floors can be called anything but ‘open air’.

Rand studied the city, what he could see of it from the balcony anyway. It looked very similar to how he remembered it despite not having been inside its walls since the one time he was there hunting for the renegade Asha’man, all those years - no, decades - ago. Though probably the similarities that Rand perceived were superficial, only in aesthetics and architecture. The buildings and streets looked the same even though they aren’t the same ones that were here all those years ago.

During their journey they had discussed how almost everything had changed. Nothing was as it used to be when they were young. In a weird sense, seeing that city, seemingly untouched by the seemingly inescapable hand of change, was providing Rand with a weird comfort. _Perhaps our world is not entirely gone after all._

After a while Rand turned and took a seat beside Min. He reached into his coat pocket and fished out a pipe, filling the bowl with tabac he lit it with a match and passed it over to Min, who accepted it and put it in her mouth quickly before returning her hand to holding her place in the book against another light breathe. Rand then reached into his other pocket and fished out his own pipe, prepared it and lit it.

“This book,” she said, her voice slightly lower than usual for the effort of holding the pipe by stem in the left side of her jaw “it is as I was told it would be. The author does agree with my proposition.”

“The Balefire thing?” Rand asked.

“Yes. We all know for a fact that people who are killed by Balefire don’t get spun back into the pattern; don’t get reborn. Same goes for those who die in tel’aran’rhoid, but,” Being distracted by a book never stopped Min from having a conversation. A life time spent with one’s nose in books gave one the ability to treat reading much like breathing; it comes naturally, and does not interfere with any other activity. “how do we know that for a fact? How could we possibly know?”

Rand didn’t have an answer to this question, like the first few times she’d asked it.

“The answer is we couldn’t. There is no way scholars of the Second Age or any age before it could test that theory, hence it is not a proven fact, hence it is not a fact, merely a hypothesis. So why do we all believe it, and hold to that believe with such certainty?” She looked at Rand, taking the pipe out of her mouth and working her jaw for a moment.

“Because someone said so?”

“Exactly. And that someone was wrong, or at least, not as certain of his position as they would have us believe.” she put the pipe back in her mouth “My guess is, for the Balefire, someone really wanted people to stop using Balefire. As for the world of dreams, well, the same thing could be the reason.”

“And the author of this book agrees with you?” Rand asked.

“More or less, yes. Too bad he lived…” she paused and lifted the cover of the book and studied it for a moment, “Oh wow, Caros Stive? He lived more than a thousand years ago.”

“So, Caros Stive, and more than a thousand years later, Min Farshaw.” Rand gave a short laugh “I am certain there were others who came to the same conclusion.”

“Very probably, yes. Sadly, no one can think of any names. I got the name of this book from a Brown Sister who gave a lecture at my school once, some twelve years ago.” A light breathe came by, and Min simply laid one hand to hold her place in the book and the other on the notes. She did it so expertly that it seemed she barely even noticed what it is she’s doing “She and I kept a correspondence. When I wrote to her about the subject, and asked her to check if there is anything in the Tar Valon library, she wrote back that there were some relevant titles there. I had copies of some of them in my library, and one of them of them mentioned this book.”

“What about these other books?” Rand gestured towards the stack beside her.

“Oh these? I was in a library Rand, did you honestly expect me to pick only one book?”

Rand smiled and said “No I suppose not.”

He let her read in peace for a while. The only sound apart from what came from the city below was the turning of the pages.

He didn’t mind that they did not talk. It was nice just being around each other. Companionship was what he missed most. As Min became a renowned scholar and Rand traveled the world, they grew apart. Barely seeing each other for years and years at a time. Now Rand felt old, the face staring back at him from the mirror was not the one he remembered carrying as a youth, not even the one he walked away from Merrilor with. He does not regret traveling the world, and he could not have dreamed of taking Min - or Elayne or Aviendha for that matter - away from her own lives to accompany him. So why then, in this moment, does he regret not spending time with Min throughout the years?

“Do you have any regrets?” Startled, Rand looked over to Min who still had her nose in a book. Could she have been thinking the same thing? She took one glance up at him then looked back down.

“You know I find it very strange when you do that.” Rand said while staring at the side of her head.

“Do what?” she asked in an innocent tone.

“Guess what I was thinking.” He said “And do it so accurately, every time.”

He could see a shadow of a smile and he knew she would not explain herself. He sighed and turned his gaze onto the city again and sat back in his chair.

“Well, do you?” came her question a few moments later.

He chuckled softly “What do you think?”

“Well what do you regret most?” Min asked.

“I think there are more pleasant things to talk about than an old man’s regret.”

“Humor me.”

“I don’t know; my biggest regret must be my failures at the Last Battle.” at that Min turned with a bewildered look on her face. 

“What do you mean failures? If memory serves, we won. As evident by you, and everyone and everything else still existing?”

“Yes but…” he paused, rubbing his hands together. He was plagued by these doubts, for more than half a century now, and he elected to never share them, even with those closest to him. “Was it enough? Was I…enough?” When she didn’t speak he went on “I could have done better, I could have been better. I should have been able to protect more of them. Egwene…” he fell silent again “I know it’s foolish of me, she told me so herself. But I still feel some responsibility. I was supposed to be protector of the world, and I let hundreds of thousands die. They died because I couldn’t save them. They died because…I wasn’t enough.”

“You didn’t let anyone die.” Min said without looking up. The Bond told him that his words were upsetting her - which was the reason why he never talked about this topic - and he made the decision to try and change the subject, however she went right on “you are too full of yourself. Thinking something like that was under your control…”

“It was.” Rand said quickly “I should have prepared better, spent more time reading, thinking things through. Knowledge, that was the secret to saving more lives. That’s what I regret most, not paying more attention to knowledge that could have saved so many people.”

She was silent for a while, and he regretted opening the subject again. In an effort to change it he asked “What about you, what do you regret most?” and as soon as he spoke those words he realized his mistake.

She gave a small, albeit bitter, laugh “Funny. Exactly the same.” she fidgeted in her seat slightly and said “When master Fel died, I took over as your…let’s say resident scholar.” she swallowed loudly then continued “At first it was in a desire to be useful, it quickly turned into my life’s passion as we all now know. But…”

“Min, forget I said anything, please.”

“The knowledge you speak of, the knowledge you lacked. I had it, it was all there. I just could not discern the meaning behind it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Karatheon cycle. Everything was in it. Everything.” she turned to face him, but the sorrow he felt through the bond wasn’t there on her face “If I managed to decipher it, if I managed to grasp the messages hidden in it, I could have made your life a lot easier. And helped you save all those people. But I could not. I was not enough.”

Rand was silent for a moment then said “Well you are not to blame for that.”

“And you are?”

He shook his head and said “It’s those light blinded Aes Sedai who wrote it. Why did they have to be so cryptic?”

She stared at him for a moment then started to laugh.

“I’m serious. Do you have any idea how many walls I banged my head against trying to understand it?” she laughed louder “I mean ‘He shall slay his people with the sword of peace, and destroy them with the leaf’ what does that even mean? And that was one of the easier ones.”

She was still laughing and trying to speak “Or…or” she took a deep breath to try to talk through the laughter “’As the plow breaks the earth shall he break the lives of men, and all will be consumed by the fire in his eyes’.”

“I thought that part meant Ba’alzamon for a while by the way.” He said and she resumed laughing “I did, I never had fire in my eyes. ‘weep for your salvation o ye people of the world.’ Light that scared me to no end.”

She finally managed to quiet her laughter “Those parts about Callandor…”

“Don’t even get me started about the parts about Callandor.” It was his turn to laugh and she joined him “Come on. 'Into the heart he thrusts his sword? Into the heart to hold their hearts?’ What if, in the millennia since it was written, some ruler decided to change the name of the Heart of Tear? What then? We would have been hip deep in cow dung that’s what.”

They kept giggling for a while, whenever one stops laughing the other chuckles and triggers a fit of laughter in the other. Finally when they settled Min said “So that is one regret we can both push off our lists. We blame it on the Aes Sedai of old. Do you have any other regrets?”

He would never manage to push that regret off his list and neither would she, and they both knew it. He picked the pipe back up and relit it. “Oh the list is endless. That was on the top. Very close to it was what I did after the Battle. I wanted to travel, and travel I did. A part of me wishes I spent that time with you, Elayne and Aviendha. My children. I barely know most of them. “

“You know you couldn’t be a bigger part of your children’s lives.” Min said almost dismissively, returning her attention to the book “How long before one of them realizes that you look exactly like the man in the portraits depicting their father’s nemesis? How do you think Janduin or Vam would have reacted once they noticed that?”

“Well Vam has never been very observant so we needn’t have worried.” Min gave a short laugh “And yes, it was probably a good idea that I stay the weird friend their mother receives every once in a while. I tell myself it was better for the children, but the truth is, I know even if I kept my original face it would not have changed anything.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes. After the last battle I…I felt a strange sense of entitlement. _I saved the world_ I used to tell myself. I deserve some peace and happiness. When in reality I know, always knew, deep down, that it wasn’t just me who saved the world. Everyone and anyone who stepped on that field, and those who fought to get us there, they share the credit. Equally. Did they all deserve a trip around the world and a lifetime of leisure too?” Rand kept his focus on his hands, still rubbing them together. _How can she get me to talk like that?_ “A lot of them didn’t get to walk away, I did, and that was all the reward I deserved. Probably more than I deserved.”

“I don’t know. Sounds to me like you did not survive by choice. Here you are, an old man, half a century later and you still talking as if you’re upset you did.” she took the pipe from between her teeth and knocked it on the railing a couple of times to empty the ashes, then handed it to Rand “The others chose to fight and die, you did not. You were bound by the pattern to stand at Shayul Ghul.”

Rand took her pipe and stuffed it back in his pocket. He emptied the bowl of his forgotten pipe and put that back too. “Exactly. _They chose._ Which makes them more honorable, makes their sacrifices all the more admirable. Me? Given the choice I would have probably stayed a sheepherder in my father’s farm.”

“The question was not about the honorability or the admirability of your sacrifice,” she said turning another page “but I am glad you brought up Tam’s farm. Because the question was how you feel about travelling the world instead of staying with your children. What, do you think, your life would have been like had you not been the Dragon Reborn?”

“Yeah it is not like I asked myself that question half a thousand times.” Rand said.

“Just answer the bloody question.”

Rand sighed and said “Well, in all likelihood, I would have stayed in Tam’s farm, herding sheep and growing tabac. “ after a moment’s pause he added with a slightly wistful smile “I was all poised to marry Egwene you know. So maybe that is what would have happened, had she too stayed in the Two Rivers. Me and her, raising children and crops. It might not have been a bad life.”

“It does not sound bad to me at all.” Min said “But, do you not think you would have gotten that feeling? That urge to travel around, see the world, have adventures? Your father did, so why wouldn’t you?”

Rand thought for a moment “I think I would have married young, unlike Tam. I don’t think the opportunity would have arisen to travel.”

“The opportunity is ever there. You just have to leave your children and your farm behind and you will get the pleasure of seeing the whole world.” Min said with a little flair in her voice “Or, you could have stayed, and on your death you would regret all the things you never saw.”

“So in that case, the choice would have been to be a terrible father, abandon my children and travel the world and in my old age regret not spending time with my children, or be a good father spend time with my children and regret not travelling the world.” Rand gave a bitter chuckle “It does not matter either way, I am who I am. Marrying Egwene, settling on Tam’s farm, that was never in the pattern for me so thinking on it is useless.”

“Is it though? Here you are, at the end of one side of that very same crossroad.” Min said looking up from the book momentarily. “And you chose travelling, and you regret it. Do you understand what I am getting at here?”

“I think.” Rand said scratching his chin “Sheepherder or Dragon Reborn, the choices are the same really. And I guess we do not have to wonder which choice I would have made since I already made it. The terrible father route.”

“Precisely.”

“Mind you, the main difference is that as the Dragon Reborn, I have an excuse. Maybe not an excuse but people would say ‘He’s the Dragon Reborn, it’s okay if he is a terrible father because he saved the world’.” he gave another bitter laugh.

“People might say that. But you certainly don’t.”

Rand did not reply right away. He stood and leaned on the railing. “Why isn’t a single human life span enough to do both? Raise your children properly and then leave to see the world? Or do whatever you fancy in your old age?” he looked back to see Min scribbling something in her notes “Do you ever wish you had a channellers life span?”

“Any scholar would tell you,” she said after finishing her note “no life is long enough to sate the hunger that drives the pursuit of knowledge.”

“Travelers would say something similar.” Rand said looking away again “I’ve visited a lot of places, a lot of cities. Half way through some places I haven’t visited became ruins, disappeared, and new places rose, more than I can ever visit. The thing about seeing the world is that it is never the same for long. Things go away and you miss them, and new things come along and you’re not there to see them.”

“And in both these cases even a channeller’s life span is not enough. So your regret is meaningless, why regret what you cannot possibly change?”

“Well we have that settled, what about you? What else do you regret? You never had kids do you regret that?”

“Light no.” Min said and laughed. She then paused and said “Well, maybe. Not really but sometimes,” she paused again “Can we move on to a happier subject?”

Rand considered pushing her like she pushed him. Though he had to admit that he felt slightly better about some things, he still did not want to subject her to the same discomfort he felt a short time earlier. “I don’t even know why we were talking about regret.” Rand said “I guess it is true what they say about old people.” he glanced at the street in front of the balcony and said “What do you say we take a walk?”

“A walk?” Min asked with a slight tinge of panic, she gripped the book in her hand as if Rand suggested burning it instead of putting it down momentarily.

“Yes a walk. In the past whenever we visited a city you and I we walked its streets on the first day and besides,” Rand said turning around and standing by her chair “I am hungry. And you haven’t eaten anything all day either.”

“Fine.” Min groaned the word more than said it. Settling her pen and notes in her sleeve, she closed the huge tome in her lap and put it on top of the stack beside her. She stood up, and appeared shaken for a few moments. Rand knew through the bond that she was dizzy, and experiencing a flash of fatigue. No longer a surprise, but still just as distressing as the first time she experienced it while he was nearby. After only a short time it passed and she steadied herself and said “I don’t want to leave these books here.”

“I’ll get them inside.” Rand said and knelt and tried to pick up the entire stack. After failing he stood straight, feeling a slight blush “I may have underestimated just how heavy it is.”

Min seemed amused as he picked the bigger portion of the stack, leaving two books on the floor, intending to go back for them but as he settled what he had beside the bed Min carried the rest in with her.

They left the inn and walked out into a clean but very small alley. Oil-less lanterns hung on the wall along the alley, giving the impression that it was never truly dark, and hence completely safe, though it was still light out so they were still unlit.

Far Madding has always been a very safe place. With peace cords keeping swords in their scabbards, guards patrolling every street at every hour of the day, and of course, the giant ter’angreal that prevented channeling. 

They moved out onto the main street. Some of the buildings looked familiar to Rand, though he knew he probably never laid eyes on them. Rand admired the architecture, it followed certain traits throughout the city and yet each building looked more or less unique. Still, if one of them was lined up against buildings from another city one would probably be able to point right at it and say: This is from Far Madding.

“I never came back here you know, not since that one time I dragged you here to hunt those rogue Asha’man.” Rand remarked.

“Neither have I.” Min said looking around, she was studying her surroundings with a scholar’s eye, a look Rand has grown accustomed to seeing “I still hate this city. Too many bad memories.” she plucked out the folded paper notes from her sleeve. She held it in her left hand and with her right arm still looped around Rand’s elbow held the pen, she started writing in it.

“Bad memories? Why would you have bad memories here?” Rand said, feeling amused. A walk with Min was never just a walk. Min might leave her books, but her books never leave her. “It was me who fell off a roof and subsequently spent a night in a jail cell.” after a short pause he added “Well, I was not the only one who fell off a roof and spent a night in a jail cell but still, if anyone should have bad memories, it’s me.”

She glared up at him “I hope you are not foolish enough to think my stay here was pleasant.” she went back to scribbling in her notes “I was the one who had to sit, idle, helpless, while I felt you harden as steel through the bond. Felt parts of you die. Figuratively of course, and…” she trailed off as she noticed something. Quickly she flipped through the notes until she found a section and scrawled a mark next to it “uh…I…” she went back to the previous part and scrawled the same mark to connect the two sections “uuh…where was I?” she asked looking up at him.

Rand let out a short laugh and said “I was being an idiot, and you were correcting me.”

Min beamed at that. Giving Rand the smile that through all the decades never ceased to make Rand’s heart beat a little faster. “Proving that, in fact, some things never change.” After a moment she added “So yeah, I still do not like this city. And I still wonder at their absolute rejection of anything One Power related. It is nonsensical.”

“Maybe.” Rand said looking around “But perhaps, in their nonsensical adherence to seemingly obsolete costumes they are heading in a good path.”

“What do you mean?” Min asked, sounding curious.

“Well look at this place.” Rand gestured around “The research in medicine and technology here is rivaled only by the school in Cairhien. They took Master Poel’s horseless locomotion concept and developed it tremendously. We have seen what? Two, three of these things today? That’s more than you would see in Cairhien or Caemlyn in any given day.” then he pointed at a bracket hanging from the side of a building and said “And those lambs that require no oil. And the pen you are now using that can write five pages without the need to dip it in an inkwell. All these innovations find a root, at least to some extent, here in Far Madding.” Rand paused and said “Perhaps their rejection of the One Power led them to look elsewhere to make their lives easier. There are only so many channelers and only so much they can do. Maybe in their ignorance, Far Madding has become a model for every future city.”

Min stayed silent for a while then said “The pen hardly makes it to four pages.” Rand laughed and she joined him before saying “I love it when you use that brain of yours. I keep forgetting you have one but that’s because you do not remind me often enough.”

Rand laughed and said “I shall endeavor to keep reminding you.”

“Your logic is very sound of course. But one must remember,” Rand looked at her “when trying to ascertain the future of the human race using logic, that humans rarely, if ever, act logically.”

Rand nodded his ascent and they continued walking in silence for a while.

In time they entered the market area. “Oh this just smells wonderful.” Min said as they passed a hawker who was selling some type of pie. It smelled sweet, too sweet for Rand’s liking tough he knew Min had an affinity for sugary food. “What is that?” She asked the old man standing by the cart. The man explained that it some sort of baked pastry dunked in honey and stuffed with assorted wild berries. “Oh I could never finish one of those on my own.” She then turned to Rand and asked “Want to split one with me?”

“Sure.” Rand said shrugging. Not bothered at all by the prospect of eating a snack that has more sugar in it than the average pantry because he knew he probably won’t have to.

“This is so good.” Min said as they resumed walking. She had stuffed her folded notes deeper into her sleeve and pulled the cuff tight to prevent them from slipping and getting messy with the honey.

“If a child ate that his or her parents will not sleep for three days.” Rand said with a slight smile.

“Well I am not a child.” Min said curtly around a mouthful “And you are not my parent. As a matter of fact I am older than you are.”

“By a couple of years. At our age, differences this slight do not even count.”

Min smiled to herself as she continued to eat “Still, you should listen to me.”

“When have I ever not listened to you?” Rand asked then after a brief pause and before she could answer he said “Don’t…don’t answer that.”

Min did her best to suppress a laugh, covering her mouth so food wouldn’t fall out. “You silly old woolhead.” She said after swallowing.

Reminded of the conversation they had earlier, Rand did his best to look away and hide the look on his face. It was a futile effort of course, he knew she could feel the sadness in him through the bond. He pushed it away as quickly as he could, though the sentiment that brought it still burned in his head. _This is what I regret not having more of in my memories._

Min did not ask, for she must have figured it out. She did however say after a dozen or so steps spent in silence “I am afraid I have eaten your half.”

Rand smiled and said “What a surprise.” in a sarcastic tone.

“Don’t get snarky with me, sheepherder.” Min said, feigning irritation.

“You know I haven’t herded sheep in a very, very long time.” he said laughing, “And even in my youth, my father did most of the tending to the sheep. I had other duties on the farm.”

“You’ll always be a sheepherder in my eyes.”

Rand laughed quietly, for some reason that sentence brought on the same weird comfort he felt earlier. “And anyway, I was not hungry. And you know I am not that fond of sweets.”

Min finished the pie and plucked a handkerchief from her pocket, with which she proceeded to wipe first her lips and chin and next her hands. After her hands were thoroughly cleaned she tucked the handkerchief back. While she was doing that Rand was preparing her pipe and lighting it, she took it from him and thanked him then said “You know, perhaps I judged this city too harshly.”

“Is that right?” Rand asked around the stem of his pipe, which he was in the process of lighting.

“Yes.” Min said, sticking her pipe in her mouth and retrieving her folded notes. “For some reason I had expected it to be a lot more…oppressed. A governing body tyrannical enough to impose a city wide discrimination against a class of individuals is surely tyrannical in other ways.” she paused for a second before adding “But the city seems so…bland. Down in the streets, among the citizens, it feels normal. It is as you would expect a city to be like.”

 “There is a difference though. Perhaps it is more noticeable for me because I never quite gotten rid of the Warder in me. There is a definite atmosphere of safety here. With the piece cord wrapped around every scabbard, and the city guards patrolling everywhere diligently at all times of the day, people here seem less scared than those you’d see in other cities.”

“Safe yes, secure, definitely. But the piece cord is seen by many as a form of oppression.” Min stated.

Rand shrugged and said “Perhaps. But is it better in say Ebou Dar where people kill each other left and right over petty differences? I mean, there is a tradeoff of course. I managed to get around the piece cord the last time I was here and any criminal with half a brain would manage the same. Said criminal can then walk up to anybody and kill them. The guards, as ubiquitous as they are, will surely catch the criminal but the person would still be killed. They may have had a chance to defend him or herself if it weren’t for that light blinded piece cord.”

Rand was suddenly aware of how Min was staring at him.

“What?” then after a moment he said “Oh right, my brain that you keep forgetting I possess.”

“No it’s not that. Well, it is but something else.” Min said “It was a little frightening to see how your thought process strongly resembles my own.”

“What? You mean going in circles?”

“What’s wrong with circles, they are a nice shape.” Min said then turned her attention back to her notes. She was nearing the end of them, and that meant, Rand knew, that she will soon want to return to the inn. “Circular logic dilemmas, especially ones relating to morality, remind us of one essential fact about the universe. With the exception of very rare, very extreme cases, there is no such thing as absolute right or absolute wrong.”

“Very rare and very extreme.” Rand mused “Like the Dark One?”

Min was silent for a few moments, she was half distracted by what she was looking at in her notes but she answered anyway “Not really. Questions of morality are all about choice. Choosing to do the right thing or the wrong thing, or the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason, and so on. With the Dark one though, I do not think there was a choice in the matter. He was acting on his nature.”

“So he could not choose not to be evil, is that what you are saying?” Rand asked.

“I guess this is where it gets complicated. From his perspective, he was not doing evil. And with a wide enough scope, good and evil are matters of perspective.” Min tucked the notations back up her sleeve. Either she was done with them or her conversation with Rand proved too interesting. Rand knew it was probably the former, he knew no matter how much he tried, he could never be as interesting to Min as a book.

“But his actions caused chaos, death, starvation, and the loss of choice.” Rand said “Surely these things count as objectively evil.”

“Perhaps. From our perspective they sure do. We tend to think about the Dark One as the antithesis of the Creator. And we tend to think of the Creator as an all good, benevolent being. But it is my belief that the main reason we think that is because we only exist due to the actions of the Creator. We know that the actions of the side of the Creator - the side we assigned to be the Light, the side we continue to consciously act on - are paramount to our continued existence, and the Dark One announced his opposition to all that, thus we assign him the side of the Shadow and announce that he is evil.”

“Hold on.” Rand said suddenly “I am quite sure he refers to his own side as the Shadow. We did not assign it to him.”

“Maybe by assigning the mantle of ‘Light’ to everything he opposed, we enforced the mantle of ‘Shadow’ on him.” Rand was still trying to process what she was saying when she added “And another thing, what do you think happened to the Dreadlords? Those converted by the ritual of thirteen Fades and thirteen channelers?”

“Why are you asking me?” Rand asked “You wrote a book on the subject.”

“And you read it?”

“Of course. I read all your books.”

“And you agree with what I stipulated?”

“Yes.” Rand said warily.

“Which is…?”

 _What is this, a test?_ “The ability to choose the right thing to do, basically the ability to choose to walk in the Light as we say, is taken away from them. The only choice they have left is the Shadow.”

“Exactly, which brings us back to the topic of choice.” Min said “The Dark One, in my opinion at least, is the embodiment of that choice. How then, can he act otherwise? Is he truly evil if he cannot choose not to be?”

Rand was silent for a few moments then slowly said “No, I suppose not?” He did not know how to react to what he was being told.

“And another thing,” she added “relevant to the subject of choice. You spoke to me of how you were on the verge of destroying the Dark One, but you changed your mind.”

“Because it would have taken the choice to walk in the Shadow from everyone, there were times when I questioned my decision. Hold on…” Rand paused, mouth slightly agape as he walked beside Min “if killing him would have eliminated the choice, then that means…”

“That I was right? Did you doubt that?” Min said with a smirk “But do tell me, and this will be the final point, why did you not do it? Knowing that it would rob people of a choice to essentially do bad things, why did you refrain from killing the Dark one?”

 _Why does this feel more like a lecture than a conversation?_ “Well because it would be evil to rob people of a choice.” As soon as he said it Rand realized what Min was getting at.

“So by killing what you claim to be the center of all evil you’d be committing an act of evil? If so, how can he be evil? Answer, he can’t, because, as I said earlier…?” she starred at him expectantly.

“You are quizzing me now?” Rand looked at her but she held his gaze. He sighed and answered “Evil is a matter of perspective.” he said in a defeated tone.

“Exactly!”

“I am not one of your bloody students.”

“Some would say you were my first student.”

Rand paused for a few dozen heartbeats before saying “I would say that as well.”

“And I would say that you never graduated.”

Another pause “I would say that as well.”

Min smiled “Can we go back to the inn?”

“Yeah I could use some rest.” Rand said. They walked in silence for a couple of streets. Rand’s thoughts drifted to the one who has been his true enemy, and the fact he failed to see until after he had defeated him. Suddenly there was another question in his mind “Do you think I could have turned to the Shadow?”

“Does it really matter?” Min said after a few moments “And for that matter, do you want to know?”

“No.” Rand said curtly as they entered the inn. As they started to ascend the steps to their room he added “To both questions.”


	2. Plans and cold cups of tea

They had decided on taking a nap, though Rand knew it won’t be a long one, at least for Min. He knew when she was excited about books there was very little that could keep her from them for long.

He stirred for a moment when she was extracting herself from under his arm, then closed his eyes again for an unknowable amount of time. When he opened them again she was back in the balcony, with a different book on her lap, the first book on the top of the stack she was again using as a table.

He got out of bed, freshened up, and went downstairs to ask for a pot of tea. Taking two cups - after putting a frankly sickening amount of sugar in Min’s - to the balcony where she murmured her thanks for the tea while still reading.

“This book…” she said tapping her finger on the book at the top of the stack, the one she was reading earlier, the one they came to Far Madding for in the first place “I could really use a copy of it. To read on the road.”

“Why don’t you finish it here?” Rand asked. “It’s big but I know you’re probably half way through it already.”

She gave him a bemused look and said “I am not close to half that, and I really want to leave this city.”

“I thought you said you were warming up to this city.”

“I said it is not as bad as I remember it being. The memories that almost scared me out of coming in the first place, they still exist. Besides, I don’t want to waste too much time. I don’t have a lot of that left.”

Rand was quiet for a long time. He slowly sipped his tea, trying his best to avoid thinking about the implications of what Min was saying “The library would take a month at the very least to produce a copy for you.”

“Yes, but you won’t.” she said giving him her ‘please do this for me’ look that Rand could never resist.

“You know I do not like doing that.” Rand said, knowing it’s pointless.

“You still think using your powers upsets the Pattern?” Min asked.

“Not upset it, infringe on it.” Rand said with a sigh “The Pattern strives for balance. It has rules, and I was given the power to break those rules, or so I thought at first. After reading your book about the nature of the Pattern I could not help but think if the Pattern was compensating for me using my powers. For example, what if when I conjure an orange into existence another man loses his orange?”

“If he was a rich man he wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t even notice.” Min said basically reciting the discussion they had more than half a dozen times.

“You know it is not really about oranges.” Rand whined.

“You know I am opposed to this hypothesis of yours.” Min countered “If you were given the power to break one of the rules of the Pattern, it stands to reason that you break all of them. So in fact, that orange you conjured from thin air, literally came out of thin air, not from a poor man’s pantry.”

“You cannot be sure of that.”

“Of course not. But let me ask you this;” she said “This is, as far as anyone knows, the only copy of this book in existence. If you make me another copy, who loses theirs?”

Rand paused for a moment, thinking about it. Eventually he replied “Maybe the library, sometime in the future.”

“Yeah well, the librarian told me I was the first person to ask for this book as far back as the records go. It won’t be a great loss, trust me.”

Rand let out another sigh “When do you want to leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning?” Rand whined again “We just got here.”

“And I really want to leave here as soon as I can. I’d say tonight but I know you haven’t rested enough. In fact, neither have I.”

“And that will change in less than half a day?” Rand asked but he did not wait for an answer. “Fine. Do we go back to Baerlon?”

She shook her head “There is a reference to another title, here in this book.” she said tapping the book she wanted Rand to copy “Derian Sedai referenced the same title as being in the Tower’s library. As far as I can tell, it’s the oldest book that claims that Balefire burns a person out of the Pattern.” she turned to Rand and asked “When was the last time you were in Tar Valon?”

Rand shrugged and said “I don’t know. It’s been a while. I don’t think I have been there since the signing of the Seal’s treaty.”

“I did not know you were there.” Min said.

“I know you were not. You were in Rhuidean at the time, I think?”

She chuckled and said “You expect me to remember where I was on a day nearly thirty years ago.”

Rand laughed and said “No, I suppose not.” The day was significant - calling the signing of the biggest treaty between male and female channelers ‘significant’ is an understatement - but it was not that significant.

“So, about that copy…?” Min gave him the same look again.

Rand sighed and let his shoulders sag, then extended his hand to her with a perfect copy of the book. She took it from him, put it on the stack on top of the original, put her notes on top of it and waved for Rand to get closer. When he did not immediately move and a gust of wind came by she quickly held down the notes and her place in the other book and a moment later resumed her waving which at the time resembled flailing. Rand moved until he stood on top of her chair, leaned down until his head was right in front of hers and she planted a quick kiss on his cheek “Thank you.”

Rand smiled and struggled to remember why he even tried to deny her request. “You’re tea is getting cold.” he said as he returned to his chair.

Min gasped “My tea! I completely forgot…”

“Don’t act surprised, this happens with every cup of tea you ever make.”

Min laughed and said nothing. They stayed in companionable silence for a while, with Min engorged in her reading and note-scribbling, while Rand just sat back, stretched his legs forward, and closed his eyes. 

Rand focused on the warder bond. Born out of necessity; for the majority of those who shared a similar bond - like Moiraine and Lan when Rand first met them - it was a thing of expedience. For two people with a shared fate, united by purpose or circumstances - often both - the awareness of each other’s mental and physical state as well as general location was, to say the least, very practical.

However when it comes to people involved romantically, people in love, the warder bond takes on a whole new level of usefulness. Throughout the years Rand spent travelling, there were times when he would think of Min - or Elayne, or Aviendha - and start to feel the bond, the link between their souls. On the other side she would be able to feel his attention, and somehow send loving thoughts, or rather, loving feelings through the bond. Those moments are why he never felt alone, despite whole years he spent without seeing another person. Up close, the bond felt more like a hug, a warm embrace. He could feel Min, feel her warmth, her love for him. Even though she was a few paces away, he felt as if they shared more than just a balcony. With his attention focused on the bond, he knew it was a matter of time before she felt it, and in turn she’d focus on it too. Despite the fact that neither of them were channelers, or perhaps because of it, they came to rely on the bond to keep in touch more than the others.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day.” Min said when Rand returned his empty teacup to the trey he set on the floor between them “You should get something to eat.”

“I am not hungry.” Rand replied quietly.

“Get something to eat Rand.” she said a little more firmly “In fact I am feeling a little hungry myself, and I would rather not eat alone.” she turned and looked at him “Why don’t you have them bring up some supper?”

He knew she was not hungry, but he also knew she would not relent as long as she thought he was not well fed. It was strange, for as long as he had known her, being with her you’d think her studies would take all her attention, but that was never really the case as far as Rand could tell.

Rand got up, ignoring the summon switch beside the door that would send a waiter up to their room. While he was impressed by the technology - flip a switch and a thing downstairs emits a sound instantly! Without the use of the one power! - he still disliked using it. Perhaps it was a lack of trust of all new things that came with old age. But knowing that his distrust was unfounded and getting over it were two different things entirely. He preferred to go down and ask for food himself.

After supper they settled in bed with two more cups of tea. Min dressed in a thin night shift while Rand wore a pair of breaches and a thin shirt. She was looking through her notes while Rand was perusing through another book they had brought with them with the light of a traditional lamb - his distrust extended to the oil-less lambs. “So tomorrow we head for Tar Valon?”

“I thought we’d stop at Caemly first.” Min said “It’s on the way, and I can have someone deliver my notes to my school.”

“We can send them from here. They’ll arrive long before we even make it to Caemlyn.”

“I haven’t been to Caemlyn in quite sometimes.” She answered finishing her tea and putting the notes on the bedside table. “I really want to see it one more time. Besides, I do not trust public mail with my research anymore, not since what happened with my third book. ”

“That was over twenty five years ago.” Rand said shutting the book in his hand, his tea which was left untouched on the bedside table had long ago gone cold and he decided to let it go, hoping Min wouldn’t notice after he teased her about doing the same earlier. He turned on his side facing her and she did the same. “That said, Caemly _is_ practically on the way to Tar Valon, stopping by would cost us as much time as we decide to spend there.”

Min had put both hands, palms together, under her right cheeks. She shrugged and said “It would be good to see Elayne again, wouldn’t it?”

Rand reached for her, she moved closer resting her head on his left arm, then he put his right arm over her and pulled her closer “And Aviendha, she’s there too. She spends as much time in Caemlyn as she does in Rhuidean these days.” It was true, in their relationship - which he could never find a word to describe, and perhaps that as for the best - Elayne and Aviendha grew ever closer, as he and Min did the same. And while all four of them loved each other very deeply, their relationship became more and more like two separate married couples bound together by marriage.

“Okay then, Caemlyn then Tar Valon.” he muttered sounding already half asleep “Then Baerlon?”

She shrugged and said “I hope I have enough time to go to Baerlon.” she said quietly, already dozing off.

After a few more silent moments she nestled her head in Rand’s chest. He closed his arms tighter around her and said “Good night Min.”

“Good night.” she answered mere moments before he breath evened out. Rand however could not sleep.


	3. Under the stars

There is a certain flavor of sadness, a distinct feeling of impetuous melancholy that strikes a person when he or she is very happy. The feeling that the happiness will not last, that to balance it out, the universe will throw a great tragedy their way very soon, that feeling is what had kept Rand up virtually the whole night.

He had pondered often on that feeling, is it something all humans are born with? Some sort of a deeply entrenched instinct that misery is the law of existence, and happiness is only experienced in very brief intermissions? Or is it something that Rand had picked up during his time as the Dragon Reborn? When happy times were so rare and far in between that a mark was left embedded in his brain, not letting him trust happiness to last for too long?

Over the years Rand had considered talking about it with someone, but the problem was that virtually everyone he was close enough to talk about such a subject with was there at the last battle, and hence any mark embedded by events in Rand’s brain, would very likely be in their brains too. Alternatively he could have tried to get Min curious enough about it to conduct an actual scientific study on the subject matter, but, while Rand was himself a fairly curious person, that particular topic was one thing he did not particularly feel that he needed to - or wanted to - know more about.

Regardless, it had stolen sleep from him, again, and now for the tenth or fifteenth time that morning he yawned. Min, who was sitting two steps above the one he was sitting on, putting her head on the same height as his - and making this one of the rare occasions that happened - noticed and said “It’s not that early, is it? You keep yawning.”

“Well it is early enough that the library hasn’t opened yet.” Rand said with a smile. This was not the first time - or the second, or even the fifth -that he sat with her on the steps of a library, waiting for it to open. Though this was the first time they did so to return books, usually it was to acquire them. Min’s haste to return them was uncharacteristic.

“Blame the lazy librarian for that, it’s almost noon and she still hasn’t opened.” Min said. She was resting her head on his shoulder, her eyes fixed on her notes. They were starting to take shape, soon enough they’ll be fit to be a part of the book she’s working on.

“The sun is barely over the tops of the buildings. Noon is still hours away Min.” Rand gave a short laugh “And- oh, that’s her isn’t it?” He said gesturing with his head towards the lady coming up the street. He’d seen her the day before, she appeared to be in her forties, and she had the typical appearance of a librarian; someone who was meticulously dressed though you could still tell that there was something more important - to them at least - than their wardrobe on their mind while getting dressed.

“Oh, we don’t open for another…” the librarian said, she seemed to be distracted with something until she looked at the two of them, her eyes widened slightly and said “Teacher Farshaw, her to borrow more books?” she said then glanced at the stack of books Min borrowed the day before.

“Actually I am here returning these.”

“You read them already? You can’t have.” The librarian said with an expression that bordered on horror which amused Rand.

“It turns out I’ve read most of these before, I just couldn’t remember the titles. This one I did not read but it did not have what I needed, and this,” she pointed at the one Rand copied “I would have liked more time with it but unfortunately I have to leave.”

“Leave?” The librarian said with a panicked expression “I…I was going to ask you if you would give a lecture in the local school. It would be an honor?” Min opened her mouth but the librarian went on “I…you probably do not remember me but I attended your school in Baerlon for three seasons. Just a bit over two decades ago.”

Min laughed and said “My dear I do not remember anything from two decades ago. I would love to give a lecture at your school but we really need to leave the city today. Besides, I haven’t been able to give any lectures in almost five years.”

Rand sighed. A number of years ago the strain of giving a lecture grew too hard for Min’s health, she required a channeler to be present to maintain a voice magnifying weave, and it worked for a while until even using the weave, lectures became too strenuous for her, and since then she dedicated her time to research and one on one style tutoring.

The librarian tried, and failed, to hide her disappointment. She gave them a forced smile and said “Well we do not open for a while, but I will make an exception for you.”

“We do not want to trouble you, dear.” Min said what Rand knew to be a lie.

“No trouble at all. The library doors should never have been closed to Teacher Farshaw in the first place.” she said with a smile “I would give you that book you say you would like more time with,” she said leading the way up the remaining stairs to the door of the library “but as it is, it is not available to be checked out by ordinary people - though no one really asks for it anyway. It is the only copy known to exist.”

“Ordinary people.” Rand could clearly feel Min’s amusement through the bond as she said it “And what does that make me? Either way, thanks dear, for all your help.”

“Where are you heading, if I may ask?”

“Tar Valon.” Min said “My research takes me many places.”

“Is the gentleman able to make gateways?” The librarian asked, eyeing Rand suspiciously. It was an absurd question given how old Rand looked, no living male channeler looked this old yet. “Or did you submit a request for a public gateway?”

“You have public gateways here in Far Madding?” Rand asked.

“The Counsels were not happy about it, but we had to establish one. The city thrives on trade and since Gateways became more common, most traders use them. Not allowing a Gateway post in Far Madding might have spelled the end of us. Of course the post is in the outer city, outside the influence of the Guardian.”

“We are using traditional horse travelling.” Min said, clearly bored with the conversation so Rand curbed his curiosity, though he noted that perhaps he had made a mistake by never visiting Far Madding since the Last Battle. Clearly there is much of interest there.

The librarian looked shocked as she said “But the trip would take weeks, Mistress Farshaw I am sure if _you_ submitted a request you could get a gateway…”

Min laughed, cutting the librarian off “It is not that we cannot afford a gateway. We choose to travel without them. When we were young we travelled everywhere on horse or on foot or by boat. The Gateways made all our lives a lot easier, but something was lost. I haven’t seen the countryside in nearly fifty years. And this is probably my last chance of seeing it. So we travel the old fashion way.”

The librarian seemed unconvinced, Rand understood that. And he did not share Min’s desire to see the countryside, for unlike her, he travelled a lot the old fashion way in the past fifty years. The reason he was very excited about this trip was the opportunity it afforded them to travel together.

After returning the books, a process which strained on Min’s patience, Min and Rand left the library. Rand picked up the satchel that contained the copy of the book and a few other of their belongings, and Min’s walking stick - she did not like to call it a cane, and she barely ever used it but they were looking at a long day of travelling so he carried it and had it ready should she need it - and they headed towards the stables where their horses and the rest of their luggage waited for them.

The walk from the stables to the Caemlyn gate, the one they had come through, was not particularly long. After all, they stayed in virtually the first inn they came across. They needed to pass through that gate to collect the weapons they left there, and the fact that they were heading to Caemlyn anyway made it all the more convenient.

The guardhouse where visitors either checked their weapons or acquired the peace bond was a squat, smallish, one story structure at the right side of the giant arching gate. As early as Rand and Min were, the road leading unto the Ajolan Bridge was virtually empty, though when they arrived the day before at midday, it was packed with travelers.

They identified themselves to the men in Far Madding guards’ uniform; a chainmail under a leather jerkin with the city’s sigil on the right breast. An officer sat behind the desk, his rank indicated by the plumes on the helmet he sat on the desk in front of him, saw that their names were stricken from the visitors log and that they signed on their weapons before they left. One sword carried by Rand, and a single short bladed knife that Min stashed under her blouse.

The Ajolan Bridge was larger than Rand remembered. The gate itself was perhaps twice as big as it had been when he first visited the city all those years ago. Then again, when Rand and Min was last in Far Madding, the outer city did not even exist. The sprawling buildings and tenements in the area across and around the lake from the inner city supposedly began as a large, near constant camp of traders when the inns became too crowded to host them all, and the city became too crowded to hold any more inns. Soon after inns and taverns began sprouting outside the city, and before too long they became too frequent for Counsels to stop them, so they built a wall around them, citizen moved to the newer, cleaner, and less crowded outer city. More Strangers markets’ opened and the city of Far Madding became a little bigger.

“You realize that,” Min started “one of the main reasons the Tairen High Lords strained so much against the Dragon’s Peace over the years is because they wanted so much to annex Far Madding.”

“I know. Ever since Darlin died and they’ve been trying their hardest to take it.” Rand said, as they walked, him leading his horse and the pack horse, while Min led her own horse. “I cannot claim to have anticipated that, but frankly it came as no surprise. The greed of the Tairen High Lords and Ladies is legendary, and I have made use of it several times in the past. With your help if I recall correctly.”

“True but do you realize that your legacy more or less saved this city. The city that tortured and imprisoned you.”

Rand laughed and said “You hold too much of a grudge against the city. I have come here with the intention to start trouble, and that was exactly what I did. They were well within their right to imprison me. And while I would say I was tortured here I cannot blame the city and its government for it. It was pretty much self-inflected.” _For how could they have possibly known that being in a confined space was a worse punishment than lashing me with whips?_

When they reached the outskirts of the Outer City they mounted their horses. Rand on his dapple mare, which he named Jeade’en after a horse he owned once, and Min on her Razor, Sander. Rand tied the reins of the pack horse to the back of his saddle as they set off North West, skirting the outer edges of the city. Soon they came upon the construction of the wall, which would encompass the entirety of the Outer City. Rand studied the wall and it seemed that Min read his mind once more.

“The Dragon’s Peace is on its last legs.” she said somberly “It is a miracle it lasted this long.”

“It was supposed to last forever.” Rand replied almost wistfully, taking his eyes off the wall and focusing on the road ahead that, after clearing the city, orientated more or less straight north towards Caemlyn.  “At least that is what I thought, I was very foolish, wasn’t I?”

“Yes. But the position you were in needed a certain degree of foolishness,” Min said with a warm smile that Rand felt through the bond despite not turning to face her. “It lasted this long, it wouldn’t have if you did not fashion it to last forever.”

He turned towards her and gave her a smile “There are a lot of things that weigh on my conscious, this is not one of them. Try as I might I know I could never have changed the human heart.” he turned his attention back on the road “I know that now, and I think, to some extent, I knew it back then too.”

“And yet you tried anyway.”

“And failed, something I am most used to.”

“Self pity doesn’t suite you.”

“I wasn’t pitying myself.” Rand said “At least, not intentionally. Like I said, this is not counted among my failures. I engineered the Dragon’s Peace for one purpose, so that my legacy is not just death and destruction. So the world does not break with my passing once more. It did the trick, and if five decades later people want to kill each other well they can bloody well do it, as long as it is not in my name.”

“You act as if you do not care, but I know you do. I know you had a hand in stopping the conflict in the east.” Rand turned suddenly towards her, how could she possibly know? She smirked at the surprised look “Some things are too obvious not to be noticed, if you look at them hard enough. But that is not the point, the point is, you tried to eradicate war and that is not possible. There is a new generation of rulers right now, born after the Last Battle and so ignorant of the horrors their parents faced. They only know the stories and horror does not translate well in stories, not as well as honor and heroism and the Last Battle had plenty of those, and so they thirst for a place in an epic, one that cements their names in history. They wish for the glory attributed to their parents even though their parents would gladly drop the glory if the horror that came with it would leave them.”

_If the horror would leave them. It never does, does it?_ “Do you still…” Rand bit off the question.

“Yes, the nightmares never stopped.” Min answered in a low voice “Though they grow less and less with each passing year.”

“Less in frequency.” Rand agreed “Not in severity though.”

Min nodded “Still, last year I was only visited with them less than a dozen times. Perhaps I will never have another.”

Rand felt the urge to change the subject, and he did by saying “The hills of Kintara.” he gestured towards the hills looming ahead, around which the road they were on will eventually go. “We should make it there by sundown, I think. Provided our old bones permit us to travel that long.”

“Who are you calling old?” Min asked with mock offense.

“Myself of course.” Rand said with a sigh, “I grew old, very old. A fact I am reminded of every time I look in a mirror. But you,” he turned towards her “you did not even age a single day.”

“Stop this foolishness.” she said with a blush. “I am wrinkled and worn through and through.”

“You look the same, at least to me. In my eyes you are as you were the day I first saw you all those years ago. I am not flattering you, I’d swear it but you can tell when I lie or speak truth.”

He felt her happiness well through the bond, and that made him very happy. “Light but I do feel old. Even if you disagree.”

They rode on in silence for a while. They only stopped at mid day to have a quick meal and feed the horses. Rand felt surprisingly energetic and so did Min, so they kept on riding a few hours longer. The road was practically deserted, the only other travelers they saw were a part of a merchant train they passed, but despite that the road was well guarded, with guard posts every quarter of a league, and mounted guard patrols going back and forth, mostly Andoran though some were from Far Madding.

Not long before sundown they decided to make camp for the night, just in sight of the Hills of Kintara. They walked the horses some distance into the woods where they picked a clearing to set up camp. Min tended to the horses while Rand pitched their tent and built a fire.

After supper Rand sat with his back to a tree and his leg stretched in front of him while Min went to retrieve something from her saddlebag. Rand noticed that she doused the fire.

“Why did you do that?” he asked turning to watch her walk to him, she had a paper holder in one hand and an oil lamb in the other.

“Too much light, it’s distracting.” She said and then dropped onto Rand’s lap, resting her back against his chest, her head just reaching his chin. She held up the paper holder to which she clipped some of her notes, which were growing too big to contain in one sleeve, she lit the lamb then started working on the notes.

Rand shifted slightly, settling her weight in a way that would not stop the flow of blood in his legs. He then fished out their pipes, loaded hers and put it to her lips, she held it while he lit it for her, and decided to forgo his so the smoke wouldn’t bother her.

Rand watched her work silently for a while before saying “Aren’t you worried that whatever you’ll learn in Tar Valon might render all your work invalid?”

She shrugged and said “It would not be the first time that happened. And it is quite likely. Like I said yesterday, the book we got in Far Madding mentioned a book called The Grave and Possible Routs Back as the oldest source the author could find for the fact that people who are killed with Balefire never return. Maybe when I read it I’ll realize that my hypothesis is wrong.”

“So you might be wasting your time right now?”

“Hardly.” She said with a bemused tone “For one thing this is only one chapter of my book that I am researching here, and for another I like to document all the steps I took to reach the truth, even if the truth negates what I originally thought.”

He let her focus on her work, staying silent, only occasionally planting a soft kiss on the crown of her head. Eventually she decided she had done enough work for the night and closed the paper holder carefully on her notes and set them aside, she then picked up the oil lamb and extinguished it. She snuggled lower on top of Rand until he could actually rest his chin on top of her head, which he did.

“I miss the stars.” She said quietly.

“They never went anywhere.”

“No, but you cannot see them very clearly in a city, and I haven’t spent time outside of a city in decades.” She paused for a few moments “The opposite can be said for you, you spent most of your life sleeping beneath the stars, you must be tired of them by now.”

“Yes, I spent a lot of nights looking up at the stars,” he said “but I never grew tired of them. How could you grow tired of that?” he looked up at the night sky.

“You know what they are, right?”

“What? The stars?”

“Yes.”

“I heard that they are the suns of other worlds. Worlds just like the one we live in.” after a short pause he added “Although I am having a difficulty imagining how far they need to be so they are this dim compared to our sun.”

“They say the Creator creates a lot of worlds, then leave them to flourish into paradise or dim into nothingness, or something in between. Maybe they are those worlds.” she tilted her head back awkwardly until she was staring up at him “Do you think a Gateway can be opened to one of them?”

“Well we already access the other worlds the Creator made with the Portal Stones.” Rand said “So maybe if one familiarized themselves enough with another world, one can open a Gateway there.”

She moved her head back down and looked back towards the stars “It would be a good thing to travel to other worlds.”

“It is not wise messing with the Portal Stones.” Rand said “That is why no one is allowed near them.”

“I know.” She said simply. They stayed quiet for a while, both gazing up at the night sky.

“It’s getting late.” Rand said after some time had passed “We probably should go to sleep, we have a long day of riding tomorrow.” he said and started to get up, she reached down and grabbed hold of his trousers in an attempt to keep him where he is.

“No,” she said with some urgency, “I want to fall asleep looking at the stars.”

“But it’s cold, at least let me light a fire or grab a blanket or…” he said trying to get up again.

“No,” she whined again, gripping his trousers until he settled down again.

He sighed and extended his hand where a blanket suddenly was there, he draped it on them both while saying a silent apology to the poor farmer who lost - or will, in the future, lose - his blanket. He smoothed it on top of Min, covering all the way up to her neck. He kept his arms out of the blanket and held tight to Min, planting a kiss on top of her head he said “Goodnight Min.”

“Goodnight Rand.”


	4. The Lion, the Wise One, and the Scholar

Throughout the next five days they continued their ride towards Caemlyn, making less progress each day. Riding, it had turned out, was more tiring than either of them remembered. In Min’s case she hadn’t rode anywhere in a while since there was always someone on hand who was happy to oblige her a Gateway, and in Rand’s he hadn’t rode with a specific destination in mind in a very long time, he had always rode around aimlessly, and when he needed to be somewhere he just Travelled there.

“Davram Bashere,” Rand said as they walked on the stretch of road leading to the Far Madding Gate, the southernmost gate in Caemlyn “was not that much younger than I am right now, and I saw him ride warhorses at a gallop into battle. I feel like my back is a stiff clump of wood studded with pain and all we did was ride at a languid pace a few hours every day.”

They had dismounted when they came within sight of the city’s high walls, and joined the masses on the road coming in and out of the city. Most of them were locals who owned or worked on the surrounding farms, coming from or going into the city for trade.

Min who walked beside Rand holding the reins of her horse with one hand and her walking stick in the other said “We grew soft, Davram Bashere could not afford that, even at his old age he was kept in fighting shape by the constant threat of the blight.”

Rand felt a touch of sorrow enter his voice at the memory of his friend “He’d sneer at how I let myself grow soft. Maybe. I think though, like most veterans, he’d understand the value of the peace that afforded me this.”

“You were never supposed to be a fighter in the first place. You were always supposed to put down your arms after the Last Battle. Whether or not there was need for you to pick them up again.”

“I was not supposed to survive the Last Battle.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“Sorry.” They walked in silence for a few dozen heartbeats before Rand spoke again “All things considered, I am glad I survived. And it was thanks to you.” He said looking at her “You were the one who figured it out for me, the Karatheon Cycle.”

“Something you would not have needed me for if it were not for those damned cryptic Aes Sedai of old.” Min said with a soft chuckle.

Rand let out a short laugh. He looked around and said “I thought the roads were supposed to be empty.” And he couldn’t hide the annoyance in his voice. He knew he had no right to be annoyed, this road belonged to these people more than it did to him, still, he would have preferred if the road was clearer.

“These people don’t use Gateways because most of them don’t come from very far.” Min noted “Most of them probably cannot afford Gateways anyway.”

“I don’t know if anyone can afford Gateways. The main reason anyone can purchase passage through one is because the Black Tower needs the coin.”

“Some Gateway stations are manned by dispatches from the White Tower though.”

“Those are very rare, and free of charge. They are used mainly to train the Accepted.” Rand said “The White Tower does not need the coin from such mundane things. The Black Tower does however, for while the White Tower collects donations from most nations, the Black Tower pays taxes to Elayne’s government.”

“The Black Tower does get donations though.” Min said “I don’t know if they are enough.”

They had arrived at the gate at that point. The guard standing there just waved them through, no one really bothers checking two old people weary from travel, but if he had bothered, Rand carried a missive signed by Elayne herself that they can go anywhere in Andor unimpeded.

The wide boulevard down which they walked led straight to the royal Palace. Once there was a wall in the way, and the central area located on the high hill which was encircled by that wall was known as the Inner City. The trollocs who took the city had destroyed much of it along with almost half the city, and after the Last Battle a lot had to be rebuilt. The wall separating the Inner City from the Outer city, Elayne had decided, was not to be one of the things they would rebuild. She decreed that Caemlyn is, and forever will be, one city.

Some Ogier builders had come and they built a lot of the buildings now standing, though still impressive, the effects of age and the elements now appeared on them.

“We were here when these buildings were still new.” Rand said to Min “How come they look so old now?”

Min snorted and said “You think the buildings look old? Have you looked at us lately? By comparison I think the buildings are faring quite well.”

The road they walked on - which is called Queen Morgase Boulevard though it is better known as the Far road - was one of the most crowded roads in the city, that is why they elected to turn onto the Queen’s Blessing Road which would take them on a longer round trip but that way at least, riding their horses was an option again.

The Queen’s blessing road was named for the inn situated at the far end of it that was rebuilt in the same spot it once stood on. Rand had stayed once in the queen’s blessing, so long ago now. And though there was a tapestry on a wall in the inn boasting that the Dragon Reborn stayed in it, it was another event depicted on another tapestry that earned the inn its fame and having its name on one of the biggest streets in the city, when the innkeeper Basil Gil - Rand remembered Thom’s friend fondly - and a bodyguard named Lamgwin Dorn accompanied Queen Morgase out of Caemlyn in that fateful journey.

“Is Elayne in the palace?” Min asked Rand as they mounted up on their horses.

Rand nodded as he settled on the saddle, twisting around to tie the pack horse’s reins to it. “And Aviendha, she arrived sometime last night.” she had Traveled to somewhere in the Waste a day or so into their trip from Far Madding.

Min chuckled as they turned into another road heading north, which was wide - though not as wide as the Far road - and was lined with two or three stories houses each with a different color. “Did they remember to shield the Bond or did you have an interesting night?”

Rand chuckled too and said “They did nothing of that sort,” after a short pause he added “surprisingly. And they very rarely ever forget to shield the Bond. This is one of the few inconveniences about not being a channeler any longer.” 

“But they have done it before, forgot to shield the Bond I mean, haven’t they?”

Rand nodded and said “A number of times yes.”

“I wonder what that’s like for you. Sensing all those emotions.” Min said “I studied the Bond, a lot of people did, but you are in a position unique to only yourself.”

Rand shrugged and said “I don’t think it is unique, I haven’t been able to shield the Bond in over fifty years so you feel everything I feel. It is the same, sometimes Elayne or Aviendha have very strong feelings which they transmit to me and I feel everything they feel.”

“Yes but you feel them from both sides.” Min retorted “Does that get you doubly…excited?”

Rand laughed and said “Thank the Light that at least one of them always remembers to shield the Bond. I never got it from both sides.”

Min snorted and said “If I were you I’d be curious as to what that feels like.”

“Well you can ask them both to Bond you and wait until tonight. Though I’d be in another country if I were you.”

Min laughed and did not comment.

The area they were riding into was known as the Younglings Corner. Elayne had wanted to name a part of the city after her brother, and indeed this area was, for a time, known as Gawyn’s Corner.

At a very young age when Gawyn was still learning to use the sword, he would carry his training sword and stand guard in a corner of his mother’s throne room for an entire shift every day. Of course standing for hours on end would bore the mind of any child so he often brought toys and amused himself, until any officer in the Queensguard looked in his direction at which point he’d try to hide the toys and pretend that he was not shirking his duty. The corner he chose to guard became known as Gawyn’s corner as he refused to let any guard be posted there - because it was Gawyn’s corner - and that was what Elayne named the area after initially. However at some point when the construction of the city neared completion, a memorial for Gawyn was held in Gawyn’s corner on his birthday. All the surviving Younglings attended, and at their head was a young Captain in the Tower’s Guard named Rajar. He gave Elayne a notebook, a log that Gawyn kept during his time as commander of the Younglings, as any half decent commander does. On one side the log contained numbers and dates and a record of important events, on the other end there was a journal detailing Gawyn and his day to day dealings with the Younglings. And it seemed that Gawyn knew each and every member in his band of fighters - who at their height numbered around three hundred strong - by name, he knew what they liked, how they acted, and from how he wrote about them one got the distinct feeling that they were all his friends.

After reading the journal Elayne decided on renaming that part of the city the Younglings Corner, honoring Gawyn by honoring the band of soldiers he really loved.

Rand read that log once, a particular passage tugged at his heart every time he remembered it. It was something he wrote after a battle.

 

The butcher’s bill was too high. The butcher’s bill must be paid; something Gareth Bryne always said. He also said that the point of battle is to make your enemy’s butcher’s bill higher, or ideally, too high for them to even risk it. And following that definition, today was a victory, but I do not feel particularly victorious, because the butcher’s bill was too high.

I lost friends today, illustrating another thing Gareth Bryne used to say: A commander should not grow attached to his soldiers. Sound advice, but I do not think it applies here. The Younglings followed me because they trusted in my judgment, a judgment I am beginning to doubt. But they don’t. Doubt is the burden of commanders after all. They continue to follow me for their faith in me. This little, glorious, pathetic army that follows me is doing so because they trust me and they see something in me that I no longer see in myself, and if I do not show them how much I care, if I do not return their trust, how then can I hold them together? And I need to hold them together, if we broke apart it will only be a matter of time before Elayda is sending real forces against us, as it is, I believe that the only reason she hadn’t committed to a full assault on the Younglings is because she - or perhaps the captain of the Tower Guard - believes that the butcher’s bill would be too high, and thus we’re not worth it. I have to keep the Younglings together, I have to keep my men alive, and if doing that means becoming friends with them - which in itself is more of a pleasure than a chore - then I would gladly do it. But by the Light I don’t know if a worse feeling exists than what one feels when one sends his friends to die.

 

Gawyn had hated Rand, with all his heart. Rand did not blame him back in those days - though not out of understanding, more like not having the time to worry about him - and he certainly does not blame him now. In different circumstances Rand was sure that he and Gawyn would have been best of friends. They could have-

“You’ve grown sad.” Min said, cutting off his trail of thought. “Thinking about Egwene?”

“Gawyn.” Rand corrected “We are after all in his corner.”

Min nodded “I never really liked him you know. He was always shouting death threats at you.”

Rand chuckled and said “He thought I killed his mother, wouldn’t you?”

Min shrugged and said “Probably.”

They turned left and after riding through a smaller street for a few minutes, they returned back onto the Far Road, a few dozen paces away from the Lion Palace's entrance where they dismounted and walked their horses to the huge, arching gate. They came to a halt in front of the gleaming stripes of steel comprising the gate and a guard dressed in the red palace livery with the Lion of Andor on his right breast stopped them and said “Visitors’ horses are not allowed on palace grounds. You may leave them in a stable just down that road. Weapons are also not allowed.” He said glancing at the sword that Rand wore at his hip.

Rand turned to Min and they exchanged a brief nonverbal communication, he was sure she could feel his irritation with the man and she gave him a knowing smile, urging him to be patient. Rand was about to reach inside coat to produce the letter signed by Elayne to show it to the guard when a hand, belonging to man whose arrival Rand was yet to take note off, slammed against the back of the guard’s helmed head.

“You fool! Don’t you know who this is?” The new arrival, who was dressed in an identical uniform as the first guard with the only difference being the officer stripes on his right upper arm, gestured in the direction Rand and Min. The first guard stammered a weak reply while Rand tried to remember if he had any sort of interaction with the officer before, his face seemed a bit familiar though Rand couldn’t quite place it, but he clearly knew Rand, or… “This is Teacher Min Farshaw. The greatest scholar of our time and the queen’s personal close friend.”

Rand let out a small sigh and he could feel Min’s amusement through the bond.

The officer turned towards her and bowed and said “Apologies Lady Farshaw, he is new. I will have him disciplined immediately.”

“No need.” Min said smiling “If you would be so kind as to inform the queen of our arrival,” The officer eyed Rand for a second “and have someone see to our horses.”

“Of course, Lady Min. You and your…” he eyed Rand again “companion…are most welcome.” He then called for a boy who looked to be about fifteen years of age and had him take all three horses to the stables. He turned back to them and said “I’ll have someone escort you inside at once.”

“If you insist. But we know our way around, we can let ourselves in, and quite frankly I would rather not wait.” Min said.

“I would leave my sword here if it makes you feel any better about letting us enter unescorted.” Rand said.

The officer eyed him for a third time and said “No need, sir. Go right in.”

Rand and Min walked in. Rand fighting to control the irritation that bordered on anger at the first guard. In some irrational corner of his mind he imagined what would have happened had they crossed swords, something that was almost impossible, but had it happened, Rand knew he could probably win. He still holds the title of Blademaster after all, even if he hadn’t practiced the forms in… _how long? A decade? Maybe more? Can it really be this long -_ and he hadn’t been in actual sword fight in a lot longer.

“You’re thinking if you can beat that guard in a swordfight, aren’t you?”

Rand turned to Min, dumbfounded. “How can you possibly tell?”

Min gave him a mysterious smile and he could feel how pleased she was with his reaction “You know I have some abilities.”

“I know about your abilities, they can’t possibly explain how you can predict what I am thinking about.”

“Well, maybe you do not know my ability as well as you think you do.”

Rand huffed and was about to say something but the castellan was coming up to them from the far end of the corridor, and has already taken notice of them. Marroen, the castellan, a nice lady about a decade younger than Rand was a niece of Lini’s, whom Rand heard ran the palace in Morgase’s days with all the discipline of a Master Sergeant.

“Mistress Farshaw, Master Tamlin, welcome. I hope your journey wasn’t too fretful?” Marroen said. She was dressed in the red palace servant livery, indistinguishable from the uniform of any other worker in the entire palace, but everyone knew Marroen, and they all deferred to her.

“How are you Marroen?” Min said giving her a smile. “Our journey was just as fretful as I thought it would be.”

“Horseback riding is no way to travel with bones as old as ours.” Marroen noted and there was a hint of disapproval in her tone. She turned and started walking back the way she came from, expecting Rand - whom she knew as Tamlin, an old friend of the Queen’s - and Min to follow, which they did.

“We often say that Gateways made the world smaller, in the sense that it made everywhere in the world virtually a step away, but there is another way to interpret that phrase,” Min said “This palace, this city is as nothing to the immensity of the countryside. There is so much of the world we miss by travelling only by Gateways.”

“Oh all of it looks the same.” Marroen said dismissively “Seen one road, seen them all as my aunt used to say.”

Rand smirked, for as long as he’d known Elayne she’d been telling him about all the things that Lini used to say. Amazing how much wisdom can one person impart on so many.

“The queen will be with you shortly.” Marroen said as she led them inside Elayne's personal chambers. They walked into the anteroom and Marroen bid them to sit down and offered them wine. She looked at Min and said “Your belongings will be in your usual rooms in the east wing.” She turned to Rand and said “And yours…?”

“Just put them along with Min’s, thank you.” Marroen curtsied and left the alone.

As soon as she left Rand stood with the goblet in hand and walked to the fireplace, his attention fixed on the large portrait that hung on top of it - one of three portraits in the room - the portrait of a man long dead. Rand himself, wearing the face he had been born with, the face he had the day he died in the Blasted Lands.

“She still hasn’t taken it down I see.” Min said from behind him.

Rand kept his attention on his former, much younger self. He couldn’t begin to make sense of the feelings the visage stirred inside of him. He had asked Elayne to take it down a few times, she never did.

“I think,” Min continued “She keeps it up for the sake of nostalgia.”

“I think she keeps it up to spite me.” Rand said with a faint smile and took a sip of wine. He could feel Elayne approaching the room, and he could feel her anger. Best leave off the topic of the portrait today. He turned to the side table where the wine pitchers were and poured Elayne’s favorite “Besides, I share virtually nothing with that man in that portrait.”

Before Min could reply Elayne stormed through the door. “Bloody Seanchan. Blood and bloody goat milking Seanchan.”

Rand and Min exchanged a quick glance and a knowing smile a moment before Rand offered Elayne the wine. “Of course it is the Seanchan, who else.” Rand said as she accepted the wine, took a sip then set it aside and threw herself in his arm.

“Not just them. How long has it been since your last visit?” Elayne said as Rand tightened his hold on her, he could feel her affection for him through the bond, as he was sure she could feel his for her. She turned and Min stood, they embraced as well.

“Well considering where I just came back from, you…”

Elayne cut him off and said “I do not want to hear it…yet.” She picked up the wine again and started gulping “I swear those Seanchan are going to be the death of me. Of all of us. And not the way they want.”

“What did they do this time?”

“Nothing.” She said sighing “Their brand of politics, of subtlety, is very strange. I recognize Daes Daemar in their actions though, their version differs from ours, a lot.”

Rand and Min already knew that, and Elayne knew they knew, so there must have been more to the story.

“They want to use me to get closer to Mat bloody Cauthon.”

“Why under the light would they want that? And why would they even come to you.”

“Because Baudwin is an Aes Sedai, and apparently they think we’re all friends or something.” Elayne said and sighed “These cow hooves out there were supposed to be here so we can have preliminary discussions about a new trade treaty between Caemlyn and Ebou Dar. Something we really should be doing since the current one is set to expire soon. Instead they keep using their brand of really unsubtle subtlety…” she just groaned to finish the sentence “My kennel master’s favored pup is more politically savvy than these so called diplomats.”

Rand worked hard to suppress a smile when he spoke “I thought Mat and Fortuna were not on very good terms currently.”

Min turned at that and said “First I’ve heard of it. What happened?”

Elayne looked at Rand and waved her hand at him “You tell her.”

“Well recently Mat discovered that some members of the High Blood were conspiring to get one of his sons to have another of his sons assassinated.” Min’s eyes widened for a second before comprehensions shown in them. Mat had already lost his two eldest children, anything that would threaten his remaining kids would warrant what some might see as an overreaction from him, and Mat’s normal reactions were bad enough “No one suspected he’d find out, being an old man who was never really politically savvy in the first place, but he did. And he turned out to be savvier than they thought. The members of the Blood implicated in that conspiracy were stripped of their lands and titles and banished from Seandar, which would have been enough for a normal person,”

“But that is Matrim Cauthon we’re talking about.” Min chimed.

“Exactly.” Rand said.

“What did he do?”

Elayne was the one who answered “He gathered all available members of the Blood and announced if something like this happened again, if he caught wind of someone trying to play his children against each other, he’d have their heads, and if it happened a third time he’d take down the Seanchan empire.”

Min’s mouth hanged open for a few moments. “He didn’t…age did not soften his edges, did it?” Min asked “Can he even carry out that threat?”

Rand shrugged and said “Apparently. He lead their Ever Victorious Army in three major wars since Tarmon Gai’don, and despite the fact that he is no longer the High Marshal of the armies he still holds the rank of Marshal-General, one of only four in the whole empire. The other three Marshal-Generals along with the majority of the senior officers in the Ever Victorious Armies have fought under his command and hold him in the highest respect, and it helps that the current High Marshal is his own daughter. Apparently it has been stated a number of times, but the Ever Victorious Army is his, and even if a large portion of it would side against him, he can get enough of it to renegade.”

“And that’s not even mentioning the Band of the Red Hand.” Elayne said and Rand nodded.

“So that is why he and Fortuna are not on the best of terms currently.” Min concluded.

Elayne took a sip of wine, nodded and said “You can say that. You know better than anyone that their marriage has never been very solid. I understand that they have been separate in all but announcement for years. Only staying together for the sake of rule. Fortuna herself was not opposed to pitting their children against each other, it is said she did the same before ascending the Crystal Throne.”

Rand sighed and added “Mat would have came back to this side of the ocean a long time ago had it not been for their children.”

A few moments later there was a knock on the door. Rand looked at Elayne for a second and she nodded and he moved to answer it. This would be Elayne’s handmaiden’s duty but she never allowed one to be present when Rand was there.

A short, red faced boy of perhaps seventeen years walked in “Apologies, sir. I…uhh…I have a missive for the queen from Chancellor Taravin.” Rand moved aside to let the messenger enter. He executed a perfect bow and said “My Queen, the Chancellor wishes to inform you that the Seanchan delegation is ready to reconvene.”

“Tell the chancellor the daughter heir will handle it.” Elayne said decisively “I’ve already informed her, she should be ready by now.”

“Yes, my queen.” The boy said and withdrew with another bow.

Rand had heard that his and Elayne’s daughter was quite adept at politics, as good as her mother ever was or even better. She even chose the Grey Ajah and when she ascends the Lion Throne it’ll be the first time that two Aes Sedai ruled Andor in a row. He felt proud of her, even though he knew he had no right.

Lionna hated him, he knew it. She was aware of who he is. The only one of Rand’s kids to know that truth and he only allowed her to know because she had always been unhappy when he was around. He thought that by letting her know who he is she’d be more accepting of him, he was wrong on that account. And the only father-daughter conversation they had was among the reasons why he decided to never reveal his identity to any of his children, he’d rather his kids go through the rest of his life thinking of him as the strange, funny man who occasionally visited their mothers than the absentee father whose legacy they are forced to try to live up to. And who can live up to the legend of the Dragon Reborn? _I sure can’t._

Rand looked up a moment before Aviendha pushed the door open. She was dressed in the Wise Ones garb, the silk white shirt and brown woolen skirt. Rand could hardly picture her wearing anything else at that point. She was also wearing the scowl she always wore for a while when she has just woken up.

“Elayne Trakand, did I not ask you to send for me when they arrived?” she asked, standing with her hands on her hips.

Elayne shrugged and said “You seemed like you needed the rest.”

“And how did you know that? What makes you think I was so tired?” Aviendha snapped.

Elayne just smiled and said “Because you said, and I quote, I am so tired right now I am going to bed.” Everyone knew how grumpy Aviendha gets after waking up, and everyone knew how Elayne liked to poke fun at her expense.

To dissolve the situation before it got any more tangled - as it does, Rand knew from experience - Rand stood and took Aviendha in his arm.

As he observed before in Far Madding, the Bond took on a whole different meaning up close. When you were in the arms of someone you’re bonded too, especially when it has been as long as this, it feels like your souls open up to each other, effectively becoming an extension to each others being. There was fierceness in Aviendha that never blunted. All four of them started out as warriors, in different ways but all the same, they were all warriors once. Aviendha who ostensibly put down her warrior mantle before any of them was the only one whose soul retained that edge. Elayne settled in her role as queen, Min became a scholar and lost all interest in fighting, Rand became a vagrant who made a point of avoiding fighting altogether, they all lost that warrior inside them, replaced it by something else, Aviendha however didn’t. She became a Wise One, but she never really stopped being a Far Daris Mai, not in her heart.

“I see you Min Farshaw.” Aviendha said after she and Rand parted, some of the grumpiness gone from her voice.

“I see you Aviendha of the Nine Valley sept of Tardaad Aiel.” Min intoned.

Through the Bond Rand could feel how forlorn Min got, it always happened when all three of them has been in the same room. Elayne had the Aes Sedai ageless face that she acquired a long time ago, and it did not change. Avindha looked a little older than when they first knew her, but only by channelers standards, by normal standards she looks to be in her thirties. Min had the effects of the years etched on her face like a non-channeler of her age would. _Their age,_ Rand thought to himself, _we are all practically the same age though only I and Min look the part._ He could only smile and try to hide how helpless he feels because no matter what he did, he knew he couldn’t change how Min felt. _Blood and Ashes but I feel the same way._

“You look very tired dear.” Aviendha said to Min “I’ve sensed you two on your way here for a week. Travelling by horse is no way to travel for people our age.” She looked at Rand and added in a harsher tone “And I bet Rand al’Thor let you do all the work day and night.”

Min smiled and said “He is a great help in my journey, besides, traveling by horse was originally my idea. I am fine, just need a little rest.”

“I have some herbs in my rooms. Fresh from Rhuidean, a plant we only recently discovered, we call it Toribiscus.” Avindha said, “A freshly brewed cup works wonders.”

“I’m fine, really.” Min tried to say but Aviendha was having none of it, she grabbed her by the elbow and was already dragging her out of the room.

“It has to be brewed in a specific manner to ensure maximum potency. Come, I’ll show you.”

Once the door was closed behind them Rand looked at Elayne and said “Nynaeve and Aviendha met recently, haven’t they?”

Elayne shrugged as she poured herself more wine “Not that I am aware off. Although she never stops this…” she waved her hand for a moment and when she failed to find a word to describe the situation she just sighed and said “this. She never stops doing it.”

For a hundred generations Wisdoms from the Two Rivers treated all sorts of ailments with herbs and roots grown locally, the Aiel had their Wise Ones to do the same. In recent years - and Rand did not know how it started - Nynaeve and Aviendha started a strange thing that can only be described as a healing war to prove to the other that their native herbs were better.

Elayne sat down next to Rand and snuggled up to his side. “How is she?”

It wasn’t difficult to determine who ‘she’ was. Rand paused for a few dozen heartbeats before saying “Sharp as ever. And many times more stubborn. She only uses her walking stick when I pretend I am tired of holding it for her.”

“She still refuses to call it a cane?”

Rand just nodded.

The silence stretched for a while before Elayne broke it saying “Faile and Perrin are on their way here.”

“They knew we’re coming?”

Elayne nodded, her head grazing against Rand’s shoulder “I had a meeting of the council of Lords and Ladies two days ago. Dayna was here, I told her and apparently she got word to them.”

“I heard things, about Perrin, about his health.” Rand said in a slightly questioning tone.

“Even Nynaeve is stumped.” Elayne said and Rand could feel worry mixed with sorrow through the bond. “Some sickness, some…thing was attacking his body. It took very precise healing by Nynaeve in a circle with two others from her school to, and I am quoting here, excise it completely. They described it as a growth that seemed to originate in his lungs but spread to other parts of his body. They removed it completely, about four years ago. Two years ago it returned, they removed it again and a year later it returned. Each time it returns quicker and more viciously. It is painful and debilitating and Nynaeve has nearly pulled her braid out of her skull trying to heal it.”

Rand felt a knot of sadness form and twist inside of him. He did not know his friend was in such dire circumstances, one more thing he missed while going everywhere and meeting everyone but his friends. He only heard about it when someone at a tavern a few months earlier mentioned that Goldeneyes was spending a lot of time in Malkier, and rumor has it that he was spending that time in Nynaeve’s hospital.

“Healing doesn’t solve everything.” Rand muttered and Elayne nodded.

For most of the Third Age healing with the One Power was only accessible to a very small portion of the population. After Egwene’s decrees that lifted a lot of the restriction on becoming a Novice, as well as the Kin gaining legitimacy - something the White Tower came to understand it shouldn’t be able to deny them - and Male Channelers no longer being hunted, and perhaps more important of all, Nynaeve opening a hospital where you can get treated at no cost, if you don’t mind waiting, all that meant that One Power healing was available for a lot more people. For a while it seemed like everyone will live forever, for a very brief moment, until the reality dawned that there is only so much the One Power can do, sometimes the body no longer has what it takes to keep going on its own. The phrase ‘ _Healing doesn’t solve everything’_ gained a lot of popularity at that time.

Of course all this was history, only slightly less old than the Last Battle itself, he hadn’t even heard that phrase for a very long time, until a few weeks earlier in a conversation with Min, she had said it to him.

“We’re going to Tar Valon next.” Rand said, changing the subject.

“Oh? Why is that?”

“The next book Min is trying to find is in the White Tower library.”

There was a knock at the door and Rand got up to see to it. It was the boy from earlier and Rand gestured him inside. He bowed just as perfectly as he did the first time. “Lord Perrin and Lady Faile are here, my queen.”

“A chamber has been prepared for their arrival, have them shown to it, if Maorren hasn’t done already. Tell them to join us when convenient in the dining hall in the east wing. That will be all Darren.”

The boy bowed and left.

“I could use with some freshening up myself.” Rand said “I have been walking and riding all morning.”

“I wasn’t going to bring it up, but yes. I’ll have a bath drawn in…”

“Never mind, I’ll use the communal bath.”

“You shall do no such thing.” Elayne said, almost indignant.

“Why my queen, I am better than the rest of the Palace staff?” Rand said with a smile. “The bath would already be drawn. Saves time.” She held him with a glare then nodded. He gave her a playful smile and said “By your leave, my queen.”

 

"Stop that!" Rand laughed softly then bowed and left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things. First, it was while editing this chapter that I finally remembered that I never explained why Min was no longer serving as Tuon's truth speaker (or whatever the title was). In my defense I'm pretty sure I mentioned it in another of my post canon fics and of course I don't expect you to have read all of them so here is how I have always head-canoned it: Very soon after the Last Battle Min just leaves, Tuon is furious but it is made clear she can't get it back without threatening a war with Andor, something she can't afford because of the unrest in Seanchan, so everyone just agrees to pretend that she just dismissed her.
> 
> The second thing is, Perrin. So whenever I get an idea while away from my computer I write it on a piece of paper and put it in a folder (like an actual physical folder that holds papers and stuff) and there was about a month where I didn't write anything in this fic, when I was getting back to it I checked that folder and among the notes there was one that simply said "Give Perrin cancer." I don't know when I came up with it or why, but it happened. And I went with it.


	5. Add a Wolf and a Falcon

Rand stood at the mouth of a corridor that opened onto a round plaza with doors to the three main chambers that made up the second floor in the east wing. While reconstructing the Palace Elayne had dedicated the east wing to the royal family and its friends, so the dining room was smaller and more intimate than those used to entertain guests and hold feasts.

He stood studying the embroidery on the cuffs of his coat. When he first bought the coat the embroidery was a vibrant orange color against the dark blue of the rest of the coat, now the colors have started to fade, especially on the cuffs, collar, and the hem. Not surprising considering he had that coat for…

“How old is it?” he muttered to himself, but try as hard as he can, he couldn’t remember how long he had it. The years have mingled in his head so thoroughly he couldn’t tell what happened when. “Oh let me think, I bought this coat in Altara, along with…no that can’t be right.” he studied the coat for a second and said “This looks distinctly like what Murandians used to wear twenty five years ago, but I don’t remember being in Murandy at that time, and this coat cannot be older than six or seven years.” He let the problem frustrate him for a few more heartbeats before muttering “Burn the coat and burn the town it was made in, along with my aged, useless brain.” then walked out of the corridor.

Two palace guards flanked the doors to the dining room, they stood straighter once he emerged then relaxed slightly once they realized he wasn’t the queen or an officer. He smiled and nodded at them then entered the room.

Min, Elayne, and Aviendha were already inside waiting for him. Elayne was first to speak.

“You lingered long enough outside the door. You like to keep us waiting?”

“No he was probably cursing himself for forgetting to bring flowers,” Min, who had changed into a pair of brown breaches and a matching coat, said from where she sat by the long table “maybe even contemplating whether or not he has time to go get some.”

Rand glanced down at his sleeve for a second before saying “No it’s uh…something else. I am sorry to keep you waiting.”

Aviendha snorted and held up a glass of wine and said “Who said we were waiting, Rand al’Thor?”

“We _are_ waiting,” Elayne added. “I haven’t seen Faile and Perrin in a long time.”

Rand laughed and walked and sat on a chair in the corner “Neither have I, to tell you the truth. I have been to Emond’s field not too long ago but they weren’t there.”

“Besides,” Aviendha added, “he stopped bringing flowers a long time ago. Or is it just with me Rand al’Thor? Do you still bring them flowers but not me?”

Rand raised his hands defensively and said “I don’t even remember a time when bringing flowers was a habit of mine. I just occasionally got some.” Thankfully the drilling was interrupted when there were voices outside and then the doors opened, letting in Perrin and Faile.

Rand stood facing his friend. Age leaves its mark on everyone, but if you see someone frequently enough, you would miss the changes. For a very long time Rand had frequently went back to the Two Rivers and met with his friend, thus never really registering the signs of aging on his face. However a decade earlier Perrin retired as Lord of the Two Rivers, passing the title to his daughter, and since then he had been traveling around with Faile - who abdicated her throne to their son - making use of their nobility status to gain access to Gateways so they’d travel easier. Rand hadn’t seen Perrin since they started traveling, since before the disease started gnawing on his friend, and for the first time Rand was shocked at how much older Perrin looked since he last saw him.

Perhaps it was the burdens of rule that put a strain on a person like that, but Perrin looked old beyond his year. He has for decades now always looked old beyond his years, but he always looked solid as an anvil, though since settling down he lost a lot of his muscle bulk and replaced it with fat. He gained a softer look that somehow made him look even more…permanent, a stable rock on which you could always depend. His coppery brown beard turned mostly silver and his face was lined everywhere, but his golden eyes were still kind and his shoulder were still as wide as ever. He was dressed in a black coat with white embroidery, as well as a pair of white breaches.

Faile was walking by his side, close enough to be hovering, keeping an eye on him leading Rand to the conclusion that there were times when Perrin fainted, or at least came very close to it. She too looked older than her age gave account for, but she looked regal as ever - she has always carried herself as a queen - in a light grey dress cut in a style Rand never saw before but he could easily guess it to be borderlander.

Being closest to the door, Rand was first to greet Perrin. Though of nearly equal height, Perrin still looked like he dwarfed Rand by width alone. He clasped Rand’s shoulders and pulled him in an embrace. “There is the man who I grew up with. Though you look nothing like you did when we were young.” Perrin said, his voice gruff and slightly hoarse.

Rand was silent for a moment before saying “Well, neither do you.”

There was a moment’s pause before Perrin burst laughing, still grabbing Rand’s shoulder “Tell me, why do the women look as beautiful and young as the day we met them, but you and I look like sheep bladders that were left in the sun too long?”

“I don’t know if I ever saw a sheep’s bladder, much less one that was left in the sun for long.” Rand replied.

“Moreover,” came Min’s voice from behind Rand. “Why would someone leave a sheep bladder in the sun?”

“And I know we look old Perrin, but I wouldn’t describe us as sheep bladders.”

“Bah, we look like sheep bladders and you know it.” Perrin said with a laugh that turned into a hacking cough. He clapped Rand on the shoulder and Rand couldn’t help but notice the look of longing in his friend’s eye. A look, he suspected - or hoped - was matched by that in his own eyes. Along with Mat, Perrin is his oldest friend, and he had missed him, and now he knew Perrin felt the same.

Perrin left Rand and turned to formally greet Elayne, Aviendha, then Min. Rand turned to face Faile and bowed and said “My queen. Always an honor and a pleasure to see you.”

“Hush you old fool.” Faile said, she had a look of weariness in her eyes, but a happy smile on her lips. “I am no longer queen.”

“I would say that I am no longer a fool but there are three women in this room that might disagree.” Rand said and Faile laughed.

Elayne had one of the guards fetch the servants and dinner was served. It was strange that even among friends Rand could observe the societal hierarchy assert itself. Conversations during dinner was spent spinning tales, each person had their fair share of them, but it has always been a fact that a leader - for example a queen or a lord - needed to have a strong character, a character that would dominate any room they were in. And before long what would start as a characteristic needed to perform one’s duty, became a trait and a part of one’s own self that would manifest even when one was in leisure. That change was most apparent in Perrin and it was also why Perrin, Faile, and Elayne dominated the conversation, with Perrin and Faile deferring to Elayne as the queen of the castle.

 Aviendha looked to be a little awkward. Among the Aiel talks were a little more civilized. And when Min was speaking she was speaking with all the assurance and confidence of a teacher on her podium.

Rand, who arguably had the most tales to tell, was almost silent.

The food was eaten, and the servants were summoned to clear the plates, and once again the band of old heroes was alone in the room.

The thought brought a smile to Rand’s face, as he went to refill his cup of wine from a decanter on a table across the room since the pitcher on the table in front of him was empty. Instead of going back to his seat he stood by the hearth and watched his friends trading banter with each other.

_Old Heroes._ They were old alright, even if two of them did not show it. _And,_ Rand supposed, _we are heroes. At least according to the legends._

There were many stories, many epics and tales about the Last Battle. Almost all of them listed the people in this room - along with Moiraine, Lan, Mat, Nynaeve and Egwene - as the main heroes of the Last Battle. Were they truly heroes though? What is a hero? Ask Mat and he’d tell you a hero is an idiot. Though ask a scholar and they would tell you a hero is someone who’s willing to take a stand, who’s willing to sacrifice everything for what he or she believes in.

Moiraine, without hesitation, gladly risked her life, and subsequently spent a year being tortured by unearthly creatures and lost her ability to channel. Mat gave his eye, Perrin lost his entire family, Elayne had her city, her home, destroyed, Aviendha had to kill a man she loved, a man she looked up to, and Egwene, poor, pure, beautiful Egwene, made the ultimate sacrifice. In comparison Rand escaped virtually unscathed.

And since the Last Battle, Perrin has spent almost all his life serving others, and has been rewarding by a vicious disease. Mat spent years fighting, long after the rest of them had stopped, and as a reward he suffers a horrible personal life. Elayne doesn’t look as ageless as she should be, being a queen in charge of rebuilding a country would take its toll. Nynaeve established a hospital and has since the Last Battle broke a lot of new ground in healing, and taught hundreds of channelers in the process, and was rewarded by terrible loss. And Min, who had dedicated her life to the pursuit of knowledge and spreading it to others, and now…now…

Rand couldn’t continue down that line of thought. He felt overwhelming sadness and shame swarm over his entire being. _They are all heroes, and I don’t belong among them. What right do I have to go through life this easily while my friends suffer like that?_

Rand was aware of three sets of eyes turning towards him, followed by the remaining two sets. He tried to fight down the sorrow that was engulfing him. He tried to raise the cup in his hand and lean against the mantle in an effort to act natural, but it became very obvious very quickly that he was leaning against the mantle for support, and that his hand was shaking so hard the wine was spilling.

Min was sitting closest, so she was first to reach him. His knees were starting to buckle, unable to hold his weight up anymore. He started sinking as Min reached him and wrapped her arms around him. They went down together, with Rand burying his face in her shoulder and Min holding the back of his head.

There was no telling how long they stayed that way, but it must have been long because the first thing that managed to pierce Rand’s sphere of self pity was pain in the knees, coming through the bond from Min. Her knees ached but she wouldn’t move an inch, refusing to let go of Rand’s sobbing form. Finally he lifted his head from her chest and looked up to find Elayne, Aviendha, Perrin and Faile standing around him. He found his arms wrapped around Min’s waist, he doesn’t even remember doing it. He gave her a last tight embrace before starting to stand, making sure to help her up the way she helped him down.

Once he disentangled himself from Min’s grasp he found Elayne throwing herself in his arms, then Aviendha doing the same, both grasping him in fierce, protective embraces. They eventually let him go, but all three hovered at his sides, ready to pounce in case he needed it. Perrin, who had been standing there silently, just looked at him with expressionless eyes. He raised one heavy hand and settled it on Rand’s shoulder and gave him a nod, Rand returned the nod, and that was all that was needed to be passed between them.

 They all walked back as a group to the table. Rand on shakey legs and he knew that at least Min shared his trouble walking. The others settled back in their places, not a single word uttered since Rand’s emotional crisis. The good mood that dominated the room has been fouled, and he - rightfully - felt guilty for it. He felt he needed to explain himself, he knew the others might not feel that way, that they would never demand an explanation, but he felt he owed one nonetheless.

Rand leaned against the table, looking down. To the others he knew he looked very intent on a particularly large crump of bread in front of him. He took a deep breath then said “The Age of Champions; that’s what historians call the Third Age. Much like the Age of Legends that was known towards the end with wondrous advancement in all human fields; be it related or unrelated to the One Power, the Third Age was named for the Champions that rose towards the end of it. When the world called for heroes, they…we, rose into the occasion. Well,” Rand chuckled “In some cases, like me and Perrin here, we had to be dragged to the occasion and beaten over the head in order to rise into it, but rise we did. All of us here, a few others still with us, and those who…” he let out a sigh “those whom we’ve lost.

“The Age of Champions it is called, because when the world presented a burden, we presented our shoulders for it to rest on. We carried it across the Last Battle, and, we did a better job of it than the Age of Legends, we prevented the world from breaking. But some things in the world did break. Things needed fixing, the world needed leadership. Another burden was presented and that time…that time I did not present my shoulders.

“I had dropped my burden in Shayul Ghul, thinking I was done, and I was not about to give anymore to the world. A strange, arrogant sense of entitlement drove me. What did I do? Who was I to refuse the second call? But you, all of you, didn’t. When the world needed you, you gave everything you could. And when it needed you again, each and every one of you answered that call too. But not me. I wish I chose differently, but I did not. And for that I will forever be ashamed.” Rand finally looked up. All eyes were on him, except for Perrin’s which were glued to the cup of win he held in both hand but was not drinking from. “It is a terrible reason to ruin your evening I know, but that is how I feel, and I am sorry. But it is something I have been carrying for…” he let out another sigh “a very long time. And being among you here today just brought a lot of feelings to the surface.”

He could feel pity rushing from all three bonds, Elayne’s was tinged with anger. For what, Rand would never know because as he looked at her she opened her mouth and was about to speak when…

“Piss on the world.”

All heads turned towards Perrin.

“Piss on the world, and on what it needs. And to the pit of doom with whoever thinks we should have done what we done.” his voice was gruff and Rand could sense the tiredness in it “I didn’t have a choice in what I did in the Last Battle, the Pattern forced me and do you think I am happy about it? Do you think me grateful for my family dying? For watching my friends suffer? For spending months in the worst conditions possible, having three villages worth of people look to me for leadership while my wife was being held hostage? That’s what champions get Rand. Mat, Light bless him, had the truth of it all along.”

Everyone was staring at him with a look of shock that Rand knew was also painted on his own face. He continued “There is a reward to being a champion, and don’t tell me that any of you don’t smile when you hear your name said in a song of praise about our heroism. Don’t tell me you don’t love it when people look at you with awe like the Creator himself has made you by his own dung smeared hand into the statuesque hero that you are now. It might not be the reason I picked up that first burden, Light knows, it was shoved on me, but it was one of the biggest reason I picked up the second. I don’t know about the rest of you but that is the truth of it for me. I loved being loved, and so I became something that people would love. But if I didn’t, if I chose to be like you Rand, then by the Light no one has the right to decry what I did, no one has the right to say I owe them or the world anything. And burn you for thinking that and burn me if I hadn’t thought many a times about choosing a different path if time can be reversed. The world doesn’t need us, if I hadn’t stepped up, the burden would have found someone else’s shoulders to settle on. It did, the second I stepped out. The world took from me as long as I was willing to give, and the second I stopped it was like I was not even there.”

He then raised his cup and said “So, in conclusion, piss on the world.”

The entire room stayed silent for nearly two dozen heartbeats before Faile raised her own cup “Piss on the world.”

Min was next “Piss on the world.” Then Elayne and Aviendha “Piss on the world.” almost in unison though Elayne added the word ‘bloody’ before ‘world’.

The all looked at Rand expectantly until he too raised his cup and with a smile said “Piss on the world.”

Perrin tossed his head back and let out a loud laugh before draining his cup in one drink.

It was a while after the mood in the room was restored and conversations veered into other, less depressing topics, that Rand finally noticed the strangeness in Perrin’s behavior. He seemed more relaxed than Rand ever remember seeing him. Perhaps in the days before they left the Two Rivers he was this carefree but those days are little more than fragmented hazy images, and stories he only remembers because he and his friends keep talking about them. But there was something else. Over the years Perrin had changed to suite his position. He stopped being the calm, quiet, introverted man he’s always been and instead adopted a friendlier demeanor that, though loud and raucous and often crude, invited people in and drew them to him. In short he became more like Mat, who in turn became more like Perrin over the years, no longer does he speak his mind without a second thought, or makes sure he is always the center of attention. They were always opposite in those regards, and their lot in life taught them the virtues of the other’s ways, and in striving for balance they, more or less, exchanged…personalities.

That was all old news to Rand, and a subject of a lot of thought and conversations with Min about the nature of the human experience. The differences that bothered Rand were more subtle. Perrin was quicker to laugh than he’s ever been, louder in laughing and in joke telling, he also ate and drank with more hunger and thirst than Rand remembers him ever possessing. And beneath it all, to Rand’s dismay, an undercurrent of sadness. His friend was saying goodbye to the world. And though he was convinced that the world will soon forget him, as made evident by his speech, he was making sure he wouldn’t forget it, trying to experience as much of the little pleasures before he died.

Once again Rand failed to reign in his sadness, and slowly three heads turned towards him, this time he managed to control it, disguise it with a smile, and as the conversation was dying down Rand turned to Perrin and said “How do you like being retired? Living the life of travel and adventure as I have been for the last fifty years?”

“I feel like punching you for not talking me into joining you thirty five years ago.” Perrin said and Faile snorted.

“We’ve been retired for ten years. He spent the first five complaining that we left our seats too early, that our children were too young for the responsibility. And the next five years he spent complaining about how we should have retired sooner.”

“He was finally convinced that your children can handle it?” Min asked and Faile laughed but it was Perrin who spoke.

“The little runts. Dayna makes a better ruler for the Two River than I ever was.” Perrin said in a manner of a grumbling old man, which - under the circumstances, Rand pondered - he was “She pretends to ask for my advice, like my opinion matters, even though I know she can handle anything better than me and she can come to the conclusion that would take me weeks of thinking in her sleep.”

“You’ve been replaced old man.” Rand said.

Perrin glared at him and said “And I’m bloody happy about it.” he snorted an added “Bloody Emond Fielders. I love them to death but they get on my nerves sometimes. At first I was Perrin Goldeneyes, then they start calling me Silverbeard. Next I’ll find them going after the color of my arse.”

Rand laughed, though he had heard his friend tell this joke at least twice before. He tried his best to lose himself in the moment, to shut off those inner commentators that seem intent on bringing up all the problems in Rand’s life at the moment, all the little voices recounting the grievances that are at the root of his self pity these days. He succeeded, to an extent, he silenced all but one voice. The biggest dark spot in Rand’s mind refused to die down, and no matter how hard he tried to live in the moment, it was there, as if in the corner of his mind, reminding him that while he’s happy now, soon, he won’t be.

Rand glanced at Min, seated between Aviendha and Elayne, smiling and holding a goblet of wine. Her eyes was fixed on Perrin and Faile as they traded banter the way old married couples were known to do, and then she laughed, and everything went away. Perrin’s voice, Faile derisive snort, even that dark spot in his brain, all went away, and Rand wanted to sear that laugh in his memory for as long as the Wheel turned.


	6. An old man's knees

Later the same night Rand sat at the foot of the bed, wearing a pair of breaches and a light linen shirt - what he usually wore for bed - and behind him Min was lying back with a book.

He was thinking about what happened earlier, about his breakdown. Not the first time that happened to him, but it was the first time in a while. And this was the first time he had them with someone else around, and just his luck, the people around were among the closest people to him.

He was only momentarily aware of the bed moving under him for a heartbeat before Min’s arms emerged from under his, wrapping around his chest. She pressed herself tightly against his back, resting her head on his shoulder.

“You’re thinking about what happened at dinner?” Min asked.

“You know this is actually a little scary now.” Rand said, then laughed and added “This reminds me of…never mind.”

“No, tell me.” Min almost whined.

“It’s not that interesting.”

She shook him and said “Tell me.” in a mock childish tone.

Rand sighed and said “Well not long after the Last Battle I travelled for a while with a veteran, his name was…” he thought hard for a few moments then say “Burn me I doubt I’ll ever remember it. Regardless,” he said, leaning his head against Min’s “We met in Andor, in a tavern in White Bridge, I think. We traded war stories. He told me things that happened to him, I told him things I made up because, you know, a man my age either fought in the Last Battle or was a coward. Anyway, he mentioned he was heading to Lugard, which was where I was heading though I can’t remember why, I mean what is there to do or see in Lugard?” Min giggled softly and Rand continued “On the road, and bear in mind this was not long after the Last Battle, I was still using my newly acquired powers with little to no regard to anything, I amused myself, and him, by pretending to be a natural mind reader. I’d tell him to think of a number, and with my power I could retrieve it directly from his head.” Rand let out a soft chuckle “He was truly fascinated by that, and perhaps a little scared of me like I am now of you. Especially since he knew the One Power couldn’t do that so I couldn’t possibly be a Channeler.”

“Well, what happened?” Min asked after Rand stopped talking for a while.

Rand shrugged and the motion shook both their heads “I stopped. Finally I realized I was taking it too far. He described a tingling sensation at the top of his head whenever I reached into it to grab the information I need. I mean, I never tried to look around in his head, never snooped on his memories - though it was clear to me that I could if I wanted to - but it still felt wrong. I convinced him that it was a trick someone taught me once and made him dismiss the notion altogether. That, I think, was one of the earliest times that I started to balk at the use of my power.”

Min was silent for a while before saying “Interesting. You know I’ve always wanted to do a study about your…pattern changing power?” she said, sounding unsure of what’s to call it.

“What would be the point? It could be Ages before another person with this power comes along, literally Ages.” Rand said with a soft laugh.

“Learning would be the point.” She said “But, it’s pointless to start now.” She fell quiet again, resting pretty much her full weight on Rand’s back.

“Min?”

“Yes?”

“We should be going to bed, I think.”

“We are in bed.”

“But we can’t sleep like this.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous, what if I fell forward?”

“But I don’t want to let go right now.”

“But…”

“Nooo.” She said and tightened her hold on Rand. Her grip, though stronger than before, was not something Rand would call strong. Time and age had stolen her strength.

“Alright then.” Rand said and started to stand up, intending to carry her on his back, it was only two or three heartbeats later when, with a loud grunt, he sat back down as he felt his knees would sooner pop out as straighten.

Min giggled and said “You’re an old man now.”

Rand grumpily replied “Yeah well, I can do it. Give me a second.”

“No need.” She said, still giggling, and let go of him.

They laid back in the bed, side by side in silence for a while before Min said “Goodnight, Rand.”

“Goodnight Min.”

More silence.

“I could have done it.” More giggling.

***

Another sleepless night, though Rand stopped wondering what caused them. _Over thinking, probably._ Something was bothering him though, something external, and it took him a good while to figure out what. Having all three bonds this close to him has a warming effect, but compared to the months and years he spent in solitude, it feels like his brain is crowded. In a pleasant way, like being embraced by three people who love him at the same time made actual space feel crowded. Well, that was the problem, he could only sense two.

Aviendha was in the room directly above them, and Min was sleeping next to him - both were sleeping, the bond told him as much. Elayne however was masking her bond, and she was doing it so effectively that Rand couldn’t even tell where she was in the palace.

Although, after all these years, there were things he didn’t need the bond to find out.

He got out of bed slowly, put on some robes, and left the room.

There were very few servants roaming the halls at that hour, though there were many more guards than in the morning. He found Elayne where he thought he’d find her, the throne room.

“Are you lost, Rand.” She said quietly from a seat to the side, away from the hearth’s light where Rand couldn’t see her. There were no guards in the room and the voice didn’t carry outside so she wasn’t worried about using his name.

“No, are you?”

“Maybe, I…” she cut off and raised a hand holding a glass of wine “It’s strange, lately I find myself coming here, and being surprised at how the room looks. It’s not supposed to look like that.”

“Are you surprised then, when you feel me approach through the Bond, only to see a face different than the one you expect?”

She was silent for a while then said “It only started to happen very recently. I’ve lived in this palace longer than the one that was destroyed in the Battle.”

“Normally I would say that getting old would do that. But you shouldn’t be getting old.” Rand stood facing her, leaning back against a pillar.

“But I am.” She tapped her head “Up here. I may not look it, but I am a woman who has seen more than seventy summers, and I have the brain to match. A healthy brain, but then, Lini was more than three decades older than me when she died and she had a very healthy brain. Very healthy, very old nonetheless.”

Rand couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he just stood there silently for a while. “You’re not sitting in your chair.” He noted, gesturing with his head in the direction of the throne.

“I am, this is also my chair.” She said with a chuckle, “The other chair, I am the queen when I sit in it.”

“You’re always the queen.”

“Yes.” She said it the same way one would say ‘ _exactly’_. “But on this chair, on any other chair, I can pretend for a while.”

“Being a queen cannot be easy.”

Elayne shrugged and said “It’s not very difficult. In normal times it doesn’t take much skill. On years where there is a surplus, save some grains, raise the taxes slightly, and use what you save on years where there are famines or droughts. Always give the people when you can in times of comfort so they’ll stand behind you in times of need. Be firm but courteous with other nations, and be even firmer and even more courteous with the nobility in your own country.” She sighed and continued “A queen doesn’t need to know how to cook or how to care for horses, but she needs to know that there is food in the kitchens and that there are horses to be rode.”

“Sounds like a very tiring job.” Rand said with a slight grin.

“Aren’t all jobs though?” Elayne said quietly.

“Ever thought of doing what Faile and Perrin did?”

“Abdicate? No. I can’t. My work, it keeps me occupied.” She looked up at Rand and said “There are things inside me that…”

“Unmask the Bond, Elayne.”

“Earlier at dinner. When…when you…how do you do it? How do you carry this kind of pain around and keep it from overwhelming you? You don’t even have an entire nation to worry about to keep you occupied.”

“Unmask the Bond Elayne.” Rand repeated. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and suddenly the barrier she had around the bond to keep her emotions away from him crumbled, and like a floodgate, suddenly opened, immense sadness poured through the Bond.

Rand sat on the arm of her chair, leaned to her side and held her as sobs raked through her. No words were needed to be said to explain this.

“I’m sorry I just…”

Rand cut her off, rubbing his hand up and down her back. “I know. I feel the same way.” And they stayed like this for a while. Eventually she calmed down, with her head on his thigh, while he softly stroked her golden hair.

“Does it feel like this to you too?” Elayne asked “Does it feel like everything hurt?”

Rand shook his head “Not everything but…a lot of things. I think…I think as we grow older we collect scars. Things that hurt us stay with us, and they continue to hurt us.” He gave a chuckle and said “Then again, I said this to Min once and she laughed it off and said I was an idiot.”

Elayne shook with a brief, soft laughter “She doesn’t seem to have any scars on her.”

“She does.” Rand said “They just don’t affect her as much as mine affect me.  Maybe she is right. Maybe I am an overdramatic idiot.”

“And what does that make me?” Elayne asked, turning her head and throwing a glare in his direction.

He settled her head back on his thigh and said “Don’t act like you don’t know how alike the two of us are.” He laughed and said “Maybe I frustrated you all these years because you saw too much of yourself in me.”

She opened her mouth then closed it again, opened it again and closed it, then tightened her lips and said “You know this was almost becoming nice moment.”

Rand laughed and continued stroking her hair “It still is.”

“So when do you leave.”

“Early in the morning I expect. She’s in a hurry to get to Tar Valon.”

“There is a river ship going up the Erinin, it will make port in Tar Valon before continuing on to Arafel then Shienar. I can secure passage for the two of you on it.”

“That would actually be very helpful.” Rand said.

“I wish you could stay longer.” Elayne said.

“We can’t, uh…” he took a deep breath and continued “I promise to return soon. After she…after her book is published.”

They were silent for a while before Elayne said “You should get back to bed.”

“You too, but I’d rather stay a while.”

“Yeah. Me too.”


	7. Entertainment

There were only two aspects in which river boats were a more enjoyable ride than ocean faring boats. The first being that it was a lot less stressful. A clever captain can manage the most raging rivers, and if you do happen to sink, you’re still in a river where chances of you making it to one of the banks are a lot better than surviving a sinking boat in the middle of the ocean. The second reason was that the scenery is a lot more varied. Rand spent years of his life traversing the Aryth ocean - though never more than a few months at once - and the view from over the deck, though serene and beautiful at times, does get repetitive after a while.

The Undying Gratitude was a good ship. An old one, from the looks of it. A transport ship with only a handful of cabins for guests and those were small, but Rand and Min didn’t mind the size, it was actually very homely looking. The problem was that when Rand stood straight his head brushed against the ceiling, and he had to duck to get through the door.

Min wasn’t taking well to traveling by boat, she was a little nauseous but according to her, it wasn’t so bad. And tabac helped, which was the main reason Rand was not with her in the cabin since she as smoking furiously and the confined air of the cabin made him feel a little less bad about leaving her in the cabin while she was sick.

The scenery from over the deck wasn’t very interesting until the boat left the city and went out onto the open plains. Rand was admiring the view, while leaning on the rail which was a little lower than chest height for him - pretty high for a river ship, he noted - when another set of arms leaned against it next to him. He turned and saw the woman he recognized as the ship’s captain.

She was nearly of height with Rand, her sun darkened skin and sun bleached hair were no surprise for someone who had spent a lot of time on ships. She seemed not more than a decade younger than Rand, though long exposure to the sun made a person appear older than they really are, so he deduced that she was probably the same age as his oldest children.

She wore wide, yellow breaches along with a white linen shirt. She was also chewing a cimannom stick.

“It’s not very often we get passengers these days.” She said “I appreciate the opportunity. You’re the fellow the queen sent over, must be someone important, eh?”

Rand smiled and said “I assure you I am no one important.”

“Then why did the queen take special interest to send you over? I got word you came straight from the palace. With servants carrying your luggage.”

“Well I am the traveling companion of Teacher Min Farshaw.” Rand said casually.

The captain grinned and said “Well that explains it.”

“Yes I suppose it does.” Rand added with a faint smile.

“So is that who is in the cabin back there? Teacher Farshaw?” The captain said sounding excited.

“Yes.”

“Wait until my father hears about this. He still brags about the time the First of Mayene traveled on his ship.”

“Berelain sailed with your father?” Rand asked.

“Not her, her father, Tyars.” She then turned to face Rand and said “you say her name with some familiarity. Did you know her?”

“Berelain? Oh yes.” He said smiling “Would you believe me if I said we were in the same bedroom once?”

She gave him a condescending look and said “Knock it off old man, she was probably as young as your daughters if you had any.”

“I do have daughters, but I didn’t at the time. And she was actually a year or two older than me, she just died young.” Rand said with a bit of sadness in his voice.

“Are you saying you actually slept with Berelain sur Paendrag Pareon?”

“No, no I can’t say that. It never happened.” Rand said and he saw the captain visibly calm down a little, that was when he said “She tried to seduce me and I refused her.”

Her head snapped in his direction. “That did not happen.” She said firmly.

“It did, right before men who looked exactly like me crawled out of every mirror in the room and tried to kill us.”

She held his gaze for a few second then laughed and said “You have a very odd sense of humor old man.”

Rand laughed along and said “I just like to entertain.”

The captain bit off a piece of the cimannom stick from which she sucked all the juice and spat it overboard, before putting the stick back between her teeth to resume chewing. She truned back and yelled at a sailor who was slacking off, before turning back to Rand and saying “Finding good sailors is almost impossible these days.”

“Why is that?” he asked though he already suspected the answer.

“There isn’t much demand for ships these days. Most of the captains of my generation either work river ships like this one, or have found other jobs. Very few ships travel the Aryth anymore and all of them are Sea Folk.” She said their name with some contempt, she then sighed and let her head sag as she leaned over the railing “I don’t have anything against the Sea Folk, if anything I share with them the fact that my family has been a sea faring family for at least ten generations. I resent the Gateways though, for making me obsolete. I’m probably one of the last sailors in history and our disappearance will register as only a minor nuisance that the Aes Sedai were more than happy to help deal with.”

Rand let a moment of silence stretch before saying “What if I tell that travel by ships will come back eventually?”

“Will it happen soon enough to matter to me?” She asked.

“No. Well, do you have any children to inherit the profession?” she shook her head and he said “Then no, and even then, your children would probably have never seen that comeback in their lifetime anyway.”

“And when do you reckon that will happen, old man?”

Rand shrugged and said “Who knows? I only know the what, the when is very uncertain.”

“And what makes you so sure it will happen?” she asked, sounding very skeptical.

“Well, time is…cyclical? Yes that’s the word. Everything that happens has happened before, and will happen again. Maybe not exactly, things repeat themselves with different…flavors, if you will.”

“Flavors?”

“Yes. But when we talk about different flavors over hundreds of thousands of ages, thousands of thousands of thousands of years, the flavors are bound to overlap, and entire ages will happen exactly as they have happened before. For example, there might come an age, a thousand, ten thousand, or a hundred thousand years from now. An age of great prosperity, where wars are a thing of history and most of society’s problems are either gone or on their way out. Ships are rare in such a world too since they have machinations that lets you travel without a channeler present, and animals that can fly to ride.”

“Flying horses?” she said sounding very amused.

“Why not? The Seanchan had them. Anyway, maybe in that age an over ambitious researcher and her very easily influenced friend drill a hole in the fabric of reality and guess who they’d find lurking in that hole that they will eventually come to call the Bore? Oh just old Shai’tan, and he probably hasn’t forgotten us the way we forgot him. He’d start causing trouble for everyone, until a great leader who is actually an idiot with great influence over half the channelers gets it through his head that he knows how to solve the problem, only, the other half isn’t convinced and they come up with their own dumb plan. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the Sealing is what saved our world although, no one could have predicted it would work, how could they? All we would be able to do is go with our guts and hope for the best. Oh and the other plan, a huge Sa’angareal that would be called say…the Chaodan Kal, now that would be a terrible idea. The first champion would say as much, but they wouldn’t listen to him, the way he wouldn’t listen to them when they warn him about his foolhardy plan.” Rand sighed and said “Some good would come out of the Chaodan Kal too, but it would be an entire age later before that happens. So each plan would be stupid but would have an upside. If they all talked amongst themselves maybe we would have twice as many upsides and half as many dumb plans, but, oh well, human nature I guess.” He turned to her and just when she was about to ask something he started and said “Oh yes, the ships. The foolhardy plan I mentioned, it would result in all the male channelers, or the female depending on which side was the foolhardy one, would go mad. The other side would fight them in a debilitating battle that will result in both sides losing great numbers, the weave for traveling will be lost, and, ships will come back.”

Rand glanced at the captain, she was a little pale and was regarding him with a mixture of fear and amusement. After a few moments she said “You do like to entertain.”

“As I have said.” He intoned.

“Well as entertaining as that was, I have duties to get back to.” She said hastily and Rand knew she really didn’t have duties.

As the captain retreated he heard her say “My Lady” respectfully, he turned to find Min standing a little unsteadily with her walking stick. He hadn’t noticed her standing there. She smiled and nodded at the captain who quickly left.

Rand turned and leaned back against the railing as Min passed him the walking stick and leaned on it with her forearms, though it was a little hard for her since the high railing reached just under her neck “You confused the poor woman.”

“Well she called me old man.”

“No!” Min said with a shocked tone.

“Several times actually.” Rand added.

“Then she practically deserved it.”

“Yes and-” Rand cut off and looked at Min “You’re mocking me.” she started to giggle “I wish I could confuse you.” She laughed louder.

“There was a time,” Min said after a while “when you were really worried about someone figuring out your identity. That has changed, I see.”

“I was young then,” he said wistfully “how does the saying go? The young worry and the old regret?”

“Yes,” she said “I used to think about that saying a lot. Especially during the time when I was turning fifty years old. I thought I was old then.” She chuckled “And while I worried about my legacy, I still regretted a lot of things. The irony was lost on me until recently; I still had worries back then, meaning I wasn’t truly old.”

“And now?” Rand asked.

“I am truly old.”

In his mind Rand considered a few replies, and the branches those replies would lead the conversation into, he didn’t like any of them so he remained silent. His eyes found the lazy sailor the captain yelled at earlier, and though Rand didn’t know if the sailor had work to do or not, he was surely slacking off again. A tall, burly man Rand recognized as the first mate was moving stealthily across the deck, _well, stealthily for a ship hand._ As the first mate approached the slacking sailor he looked up, started, and then bolted to return to whatever duties he was shirking.

“Can you fill my pipe please?”

Min’s voice pulled Rand’s gaze away from the comical pursuit taking place on deck. He patted the pockets of his coat quickly then said “I left the tabac pouch in the cabin. Stay here I’ll go get.”

“Can’t you just will one into existence?”

Rand stared at her and said “That would be very lazy, considering what I think would result from it. I will be back in a minute.”

As he started to move away Min’s small hand grasped his elbow, her other hand produced the tabac pouch from her own coat pocket “I just wanted to witness you using your power first hand.”

“You just did a week ago in Far Madding.”

“I was reading, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Rand smiled, yes, Min wouldn’t notice the miracle happening right in front of her while a good book is on her lap.

He grabbed the pouch from her and filled the bowl of her pipe, “Why the sudden fascination with my powers?” he asked as he stamped down the tabac, before putting the pipe to his lips and lighting it then passing it to her.

She shrugged and said “No reason.”

_There is a reason,_ Rand though as he repeated the process on his own pipe. He suspected he knew what that reason was, and if she didn’t want to talk about it, he wanted to talk about it even less.

“Does it have a limit?” she asked. “Your powers I mean.”

“I didn’t think you were talking about the tabac.” Rand joked which earned him a glare. “And no.”

“No?”

“Not that I know of anyway.”

“You never tried to test the limits of your powers?” she said sounding incredulous.

“It scares the Light out of me.” he whispered. After a moment he added “And I never tried anything and found that I couldn’t do it. So I never ran into a limit, and I never went looking for one.”

Min considered his words silently for a few moments before asking “So you did things you thought might not work?”

He shrugged and said “Yes, in the early days I did not know what I can and cannot do. The very first thing I ever tried was light a pipe, and even then I was not sure if it will work. In fact, I am not sure what possessed me to try it. From there I tried many different things, and every time I found that whatever I tried was possible.”

After another brief pause Min asked another question, this time sounding hesitant, probably because she was able to sense how uncomfortable Rand was getting “What was the biggest thing you ever did?”

Rand considered not answering. It was a subject of many nights waking up covered in cold sweat, unable to breathe with his heart seemingly trying escape his chest. He felt the boat rise and fall in a particularly hard bump before resuming its normal rocking. If it was someone else, if it was anyone other than Min… He took a deep breath and said “The conflict in the east.”

 “The Sharrans.” she said slowly. “I guessed you did something there. Never could figure out what though.”

Rand closed his eyes. Six or seven years after the Last Battle a large Sharran army started advancing across the Three Fold Land. Not many Aiel were there, and the Sharran slaughtered the few they found. Reports were coming in that they were heading for the Jangai pass. The world leaders could do nothing but marshal their armies to oppose the threat, the same forces that were yet to recover from the Last Battle.

“I was there.” He said slowly “Only Elayne knew, and since then I told only Perrin about it. Though I rode near his army, he never noticed me.” he felt her hand on his shoulder as a shudder took him “The Dragon’s Peace. I thought…I never wanted to see anymore fighting, so long as I have lived. And right around that time it was beginning to look like the Dragon’s Peace would actually hold, only to have it thrown in my face like that.” He started to fiddle with the pattern on his cuffs.

“The day ended without fighting though.” Min said.

“Yes.”

“In fact, I heard a lot of reports saying that everyone, collectively stopped wanting to fight…” she slowed down during the last few words and looked at Rand. “What did you do?”

Rand swallowed and considered how to best explain it “The way this works, this…power, is that I see the whole Pattern, all of it, and I can focus on any particular thread. Everything has a thread, people, objects, animals. So if I look at my own thread right now, it will be near that of this boat, my pipe and yours, our clothes, this cane, and everyone on the boat with us. I have the ability to focus on any singular thread and manipulate it. Now, if I focus on a person’s thread, I can see their emotions, the best I can describe is as energy around their thread.” He took another deep breath “I can tune my eyes to see threads, and my mind to sense feelings, not the way it happens with the Bond, that’s more personal, but I can know what others are feeling.

“So there I was, on a horse at one end of the Jangai Pass, tens of thousands of men and women behind me and as many on the other end. Up ahead I could see the negotiations. I remember staring at Perrin’s back, only days earlier Faile had given birth to Cond - the main reason she wasn’t there that day, I suspect.  I decided to find out what he was feeling. Was he yearning to be with his family? Was he angry at the Sharrans? No, he was afraid, very afraid. And you know Perrin as well as I do, he’s one of the bravest people I know, and he was more scared than I ever felt, and I somehow knew that he was scared for the people behind him, not for himself. Elayne’s dominant emotion was anger, and Logain’s a mixture of the two. I decided to open my mind to everyone, and everyone felt either angry, scared, or both.

“The anger I could only guess at the reasons behind it but fear didn’t pose the same question, everyone was afraid to die. And I had to do something, this was fresh after the Last Battle, the horrors weren’t yet gone from the memories of anyone present, least of all me. I could have made the Sharrans disappear, all of them, if it weren’t for the fact that almost all of them were just as afraid for their lives. Most of them bore slave tattoos and they were following their cruel masters out of whatever control they held on them. I got this idea that maybe I can manipulate people’s emotions. I did it to the soldier near me and found that I could absorb his fear. I absorbed the energy around his thread and in a moment I was afraid and he sat straighter in the saddle. In a rush decision I did it to all of them, everyone. The fear and anger of nearly a quarter million people,” Min gasped, Rand turned to face her and found something akin to horror on her face. “As expected, I couldn’t hold it all within me, it threatened to end me right then and there, so I had to disperse it, away from me and away from the battle field. And that was the end of it, both sides lost the will to fight and went home.”

“What happened to it?”

Rand shrugged and said “I don’t know. And that’s the core of the problem, it had to go somewhere. The anger and fear of two huge armies on the brink of fighting, what terrible things were done because I wasn’t strong enough to hold on to it or smart enough to think of a better solution.”

“You saved a lot of lives that day.” She snapped.

“Was that enough?”

“Yes. You woolheaded lummox, yes.” He turned towards her, eyes wide. “You’re not some god who is responsible for every toe stubbed in every little village in every forgotten corner of every nation.”

“I never said I was, I-”

“You did not form that Sharran army and you did not have them marsh all the way down to the Jangai Pass, so stop blaming yourself for singlehandedly turning them away.”

They held each other’s gaze for a few moments until they noticed movement at the corner of their eye. The captain was standing with an astonished look on her face.

“She…uh, she also likes to entertain.” Rand said.

“I see.” The captain replied “That was very…I mean,” she was about to say something else but instead she sighed and said “The cook says midday meal is ready. I’ll have a deckhand take it to your cabin.”

“Thank you captain.” Min said and she and Rand watched the captain turn and walk away. The moment she was out of earshot they both burst out laughing.


	8. The absurdity of nightmares

Rand was sitting sideways on the bed, with his back to the wooden wall of the cabin, while Min was resting her head on his thigh. He toyed softly with her hair as she busied herself with reading, as usual.

“So what’s after Tar Valon?” Rand asked.

“Back to Baerlon I guess.” Min said absentmindedly “Unless I find something there that would change my mind. I already have everything I need anyway, I’m only still going out of curiosity.” She turned the page and continued “I already sent the notes I had with a former student of mine that was in Caemlyn to Baerlon to be revised and notarized, if I find anything new in Tar Valon I’ll add it but as things stand, the book is more or less finished.”

“Oh, okay.” Rand said softly.

She turned her head awkwardly towards him and said “You sound disappointed.”

“No, I mean, I just didn’t want this trip to end.”

“It had to end sometime.” She said with a kind smile.

“Yes, but…” after an uncertain pause Rand decided to change the subject. “You know I don’t even remember when you stopped wearing all your hidden knives, I never noticed.”

She turned back towards the book and said “Who said I stopped wearing them? Maybe I just got really good at hiding them.” Rand grunted a laugh and she continued “It happened without me noticing either. One day I skip wearing them out of hurry, another out of laziness, I start wearing them less and less telling myself I don’t really go anywhere that I might need them, and before long the habit is dropped completely.” she closed the book and put it aside and added “This is the third time I’ve stopped wearing them. I suppose this will be the final time, but that’s what I thought the first two times.”

Rand swiped his thumb across her forehead, collecting a few stray hairs before resuming his brushing-back motion. “What happened the first two times?” he asked.

“The first time,” Min started after a few moments “There was a band of thugs, preying on neighboring towns, they even attacked White Bridge. I got caught up in the caution craze even though they never made it to Baerlon, the Queen’s army got them before that. The second time though,” she sighed and continued “it was maybe a decade or so after. Early to mid thirties. There was a conference in Lugard, about the future of schools and how can we spread basic education to as much of the population as possible. I went, with a few other teachers and students from Andor. We travelled by road since we couldn’t secure Gateways  - it wasn’t as easy as it is nowadays. We had a squad of soldiers for protection. I hadn’t worn my knives in years by that time and I didn’t even think about them that journey. Until we were attacked by about twenty or thirty True Children.”

Rand’s jaws involuntarily bunched at the mention of the True Children, the faction that didn’t like Galad’s open and accepting leadership, and were opposed to the direction he was leading them in, so they split and subsequently terrorized a large area of the countryside. The fact that they were led by Dain Bornhald was a surprise to no one, except perhaps Perrin, who was the only one Rand knew to express disbelieve about his actions. “Early to mid thirties,” Rand said “That was the height of their strength.”

“Yes.” Min said softly, and Rand could feel her trepidation through the Bond “The soldiers with us fought valiantly, but they were outnumbered at least two to one. The Children cut them down but not before losing quite a few of their number. And there I was, I only had one knife, in other words, I was helpless…”

“I refuse to believe that.”

“Fine I killed one of them, but that still left half a dozen. And there was me, no longer with a knife, a handful of elderly teachers and young students, one of whom was…” she went quiet and Rand could feel her trepidation turn into grief “was a moron.” She said harshly “Little Trewth. He was sixteen years old. And,” she gave a short bitter laugh “he hated swords. His father was a soldier, his brothers became soldiers, and he, the youngest, despised violence and wanted to be a scholar. His father shunned him at first but before the trip - which Trewth was selected for because of his merit - he came and finally admitted to him that he was proud of him, that even though he wasn’t a soldier like his brothers he was still his son and he still loved him. Trewth was beside himself with happiness.”

She fell quiet after that. Rand didn’t push her to continue, but eventually, she did “I didn’t see him rushing them. I don’t even know where he got the sword from, probably from a fallen soldier on our side. One of the children had kicked me down, my knife which at the time was in another Child heart, slipped from my grip. Next thing I knew, the Child that was about to finish me off had a sword jutting out of his throat. Threwth went on to kill two more Children before he was cut down. Shortly after a lookout warned the remaining three that a patrol was on its way, the bolted, losing almost their entire group and gaining nothing.”

Neither of them spoke in the silence that followed, until a high pitched laugh from outside their cabin broke the reverie of the moment. Rand said “Why have you never told me about this?”

Min shrugged, and Rand knew the answer. Some things are too painful to talk about. He also knew that at the time he was deep in the lands that used to be known as the Blight. A group of Borderlanders have taken it upon themselves to reforest the area, and he wanted to help. “I wore the knives from that day on until very recently. I never had to use them again, but for a while I was too much of a coward to walk around without them.”

“Cowardly is not something I think you’re capable of being. I seem to recall you sticking a knife in a Forsaken, that’s not something a coward would do.”

“That’s a completely different thing.”

“It’s exactly the same thing. In one situation you stuck a knife in a thug to protect your students, in another you stuck it in a Forsaken to protect me. The only difference is: it takes more than one knife to kill Semirhage. Of course, I know for a fact that you weren’t done with her.” he chuckled “when you consider everything, I think Nynaeve saved Semirhage from you.”

“What do you mean?” Min asked.

“Well, the knife they pulled out of Semirhage was one of your smaller knives. I know you, you first throw the smaller knives to gauge the reaction of your target, then you use the heavier one with the weighted pommel.”

“Whatever I did, I did out of fear.”

“That doesn’t make you coward.”

“I suppose you’re right.” she said, then swallowed and continued “Semirhage. I hated her the most. She gave me more nightmares than any single thing in my entire life.”

“How is that?” Rand asked “I mean, in my experiences, the things that gave me the worst nightmares were the things I couldn’t truly overcome.” Rand had more experience with nightmares than he would willingly admit to anyone.

“I would have never gotten a chance to throw the heavy knife.” Min spoke softly “You don’t remember anything you were out cold. I saw you go down then all around it was chaos. I was trying to drag your heavy behind away from danger. There was a moment, a very brief moment, when all the channelers on our side were either busy or they were out of the fight. I                saw her throw the last Asha’aman aside like he was a ragdoll. The one whose arm was broken, I can’t remember his name…”

“Donalo Sandomere.” Rand said sadly, he was one of those who later had been turned to the Shadow by the thirteen Fades ritual.

“Him, yes. When he did not try to get up she turned towards me, I was still trying to drag you by your coat. I…I stepped between you and her, unsure of what I was to do. I threw one of my knives, the one that stuck in her arm, and she didn’t even seem fazed by it. More amused than hurt; more inconvenienced than angry. She looked at me the way we would look at an insect that just stung us. She flicked away my second knife without even flinching, and when I reached for the heavy knife she grasped me with the one power, froze me in place.” Through the Bond Rand could feel Min’s fear, as if she was reliving the moment now more than five decades past “She sneered at me and started moving towards us before Nynaeve - or maybe it was Cadsuane - stopped her. For a moment this creature of nightmares and scary stories was sneering at me, for a moment there I was so sure that I was going to die, that the man I love was also going to die. That sneer burned in my brain, and for years it haunted my dreams.”

Rand did not comment during the story, he kept a methodical brushing motion on her hair, he grasped one of her hands in his other hand, fingers entwined and rubbing the back of it with his thumb. “Semirhage was good at that, getting in someone’s head. Though it was Graendal who made an art out of it, Semirhage was very proficient at being…a nightmare.”

“She featured heavily in another of my recurring nightmares.” Min said, it was obvious she was opening up about things she never opened up about before, not even to Rand himself. Naturally he didn’t want to interrupt. “The male a’dam.” Rand involuntarily squeezed her hand at the mention of the infernal device. “In some bad nightmares I used to see her, all over again, making you…making you hurt me. In my worst nightmares…she wasn’t there.”

There was silence for a while before Rand said “That is very strange. The exact same nightmares plagued me.” Min’s only response was a short, halfhearted chuckle. “Do you still have them, these nightmares?”

She closed her eyes; it seemed his ministrations were making her sleepy. She softly shook her head and said “No. I guess the first one stopped when finally being afraid of a dead woman became too absurd for even my unconscious mind. And the second, well, the notion of you hurting me is even more absurd, it stopped haunting me pretty quickly.” She opened her eyes and looked at him and said “When did yours stop?”

Rand smiled and said “I don’t know. Some time I guess.” _I’ll let you know when that time comes._

“Is that another thing we collect as we grow older, nightmares?” Min asked and she closed her eyes again.

“I dropped most of my nightmares along the way.” He said “Only the worst ones persisted, and one by one I’ve been dropping those as well.”

Neither spoke again for a few heartbeats, before Min, her eyes still closed and her breath evening out, said “Do you want to lay back and get some rest?”

Rand rested his palm on her head and said “No I am fine like this.” It wasn’t long before she was asleep.


	9. The foolish hope of going unnoticed

Rand watched as they lowered Jeadeen and Sander on the pier. The horses looked terrified, hanging from the crane they use to get them on and off a ship, but at the same time Rand knew they were feeling a bit relieved - if horses were capable of such an emotion - to be out of the small confines of the ship. They had left the packhorse behind in Caemlyn, Jeade’en will carry their things until they get another since there isn’t much room for riding in Tar Valon anyway.

“You know we could have left them in Caemlyn as well, and gotten new horses here when we leave.” Rand said to Min who had a fascinated smile on her face as she watched the horses being lowered.

“I’ve gotten attached to Sander.” She said “I really like him. I rarely ever like a horse and I doubt I’d like the one we would have gotten here.”

Rand dropped the subject and smiled as he laid a hand on Jeade’en’s flank. He had to admit, he’s grown quite fond of his horse too, although unlike Min, he had grown attached to almost all the horses he owned over the years. “They’re itching for a run.” He said as he started to secure the bridle on the horse’s head, Min was doing the same to hers.

“We’ll tell the stable master to have them walked, but I doubt we’ll be here long. Chances are, we’ll be on the road in two days at the most.”

Rand looked at the sky, the sun was already setting. They had decided to rest that evening and go to the Tower in the morning. “Sure you don’t want to stay longer?”

“I’d say we’re pretty well rested by now, we can hit the road soon with no issues.”

“That’s not why I asked.” Rand said as they started for the harbor gates “When was the last time you’ve been to Tar Valon?”

Min looked up in thought and said “Not…sure, oh, yes. The Ghealdanin succession. I know because I was here when the news of the King’s death…what was his name? Alleandre’s son?” Rand shrugged, he couldn’t remember either “Anyway, that was the last time I was here.”

“It’s been longer for me. I guess I subconsciously made a point of not coming here often.” He paused hen added “It’s probably left over paranoia but I still don’t like being here. People with so much more power than me once did all they could to get me here, and I only escaped because I felt a great need to stay away. That need never left me I suppose.”

“I was there when they made their strongest effort.” Min noted.

“Yes. Let’s not talk about that.”

“I agree.”

***

The next day Min woke up very early, as was expected. She was very excited about visiting the White Tower Library that she unintentionally woke Rand up. It took some effort but he eventually got her to concede to having breakfast first before going, as she wouldn’t want things like hunger to get in the way of her favorite activity.

The library has been expanded since Rand last saw it. A project that was doubtless very necessary or the Brown Sisters would have never allowed it to interrupt their study. It now nearly rivaled the Tower itself, if not in height then in general size, as it dominated the northern side of the White Tower compound and, with the multiple expansions, now sprawled almost to the walls of the barracks of the Tower Guard.

There was a desk just inside the entrance, on which sat an Aes Sedai with the brown Shawl draped over her shoulders. She wore a white dress with brown stripes all across the bodice, and a completely brown skirt. To one side stood a young woman in the Accepted dress with her hands behind her back, obviously attending to the older Aes Sedai, and most probably a hopeful future Brown Sister herself.

Rand and Min approached the desk, Min in the lead barely able to contain her eagerness. “Good morning. My name is…”

The sister who was perusing something hidden by the desk looked up and with a smile cut Min off “Of course I know who you are, Teacher Farshaw. Welcome. I have attended your lecture about variation in the different types of power and how to handle them. I found it very fascinating how you…”

It was Min’s turn to cut the Aes Sedai’s eagerness off “I…uh I am very sorry to interrupt and I promise to have a sit down with you to discuss the topic, especially since I have a few new ideas on the matter, but I am in the middle of research for another book I’m writing and…”

“Ooooh,” exclaimed the Aes Sedai with excitement that Rand had previously thought only belonged to children, not Aes Sedai several centuries old “What is it about? And when can we expect a copy? And will there be a lecture tour about it?”

Min was starting to get irritated and Rand could feel it through the Bond, he could also feel her physically push down her anger and say “Soon, it should be ready soon, if I manage to finish the research, which is why I am here. I am looking for a title I am told you have here which should be relevant. It’s called The Grave and the Possible Ways Back.”

The Brown Sister furrowed her eyebrows “I never heard of that. I’ve been head curator here for years and I thought I knew every book here. Let me check the records.” She got up and moved to a collection of low shelves to the right of her desk where she selected two large binders and brought them back. She sifted through them quickly and looked up at Min and said “I am sorry but there is no record of a book with such a title in our library. Who told you about it?”

The Bond was letting Rand know that Min was starting to get nervous “Derian Sedai. She sent me…”

“Oh she was in charge of the disposal of the old records. I was opposed to it you know? Why get rid of perfectly good records I asked. They all said they were a waste of space - that they don’t even point to the right books anymore. Hang on.” She waved the accepted standing to her left and whispered something in her ear, after which the young woman went through a door behind the desk and the Aes Sedai turned back to Min and continued “Sister Derian probably found the title in one of the old records, those go back to the founding of the libraries so they were the most complete set of records. And they destroyed them. A pity.”

“Well what does that mean? Do you have the book or not?” Min said with a touch of anger, which the Brown Sister didn’t seem to notice.

“Well Sister Derian found the title in one of the older records, no doubt. We recently reordered the entire library, using a new classification system. Not the one I would have preferred.” She then wistfully added “Light but it would have been a bliss if we managed it. All the topics arranged according to their relation to each other, each title in all the topics would be next to the titles most related to it. And it would have worked if it weren’t for the ninth depository. Numbers, how do numbers relate to any other study? I suggested moving it to the end but then we would have had the eighth depository followed by the tenth, and the ninth after the twelfth. Madness, it would have been.”

The Brown sister seemed very amused at the absurdity of what she was saying that she failed to notice that Min was the exact opposite of amused. Rand found the whole situation amusing, though he hoped Min would not notice that. During her speech a very young girl in Novice white ran up to the desk, she waited for a few moments for the speech to end, but apparently she got bored of waiting so she went into the room behind the desk, no doubt seeking the Accepted, a moment later she ran out at full speed. All without the Aes Sedai noticing.

“Aes Sedai, please, pay attention.” Min said, all but snapping.

“Yes, right, the book you’re requesting. Patience would be appreciated dear. With the advent of the new classification system we needed new logs to keep track of the books, and the old ones became obsolete. As I said, sister Derian was in charge of disposing of the old records no doubt she got the title she gave you from them. So that means one of two things, either someone messed up and failed to copy the title onto the new records, or the book has been disposed off. Lucky for you…ahh,” she said as the Accepted returned with a huge tome and laid it in front of the Sister “lucky for you, I kept the biggest log which contains the names of all the books according to the oldest and easiest classification system in the world.” she opened the tome and glanced at Min and added “alphabetically.”

At that point the Accepted whispered something in her ear and handed her a small piece of paper. The Aes Sedai unfolded it and read it quickly and then nodded to herself. She started to flip through the pages of the huge tome, in essence it was little more than several collections of papers clipped together in a particular order, enveloped by a very large folder. She sifted through the collections quickly until she found the one she sought, unfurled it and then zeroed in on the location of the title. Suddenly her eyebrows shot up and Rand could swear then that the color drained from her face.

She looked up at Min and said “I am sorry, I cannot help you.” Min started to say something but the Aes Sedai continued “It doesn’t exist in any of the twelve depositories.” Rand could have sworn then that the Aes Sedai was lying. Min was about to speak again but again, she spoke over her, waving the note passed to her by the Accepted “The Amyrlin wishes to see you in her study.” Rand hung his head, though at this point he was all but forgotten. The Brown Sister waved the Accepted closer “Who will take them?” she asked and the Accepted pointed towards the door, where Rand found the skittish Novice who brought the note from the Amyrlin still there - he had thought she left.

The Aes Sedai waved the Novice closer, who suddenly acquired the look of a deer that came face to face with a hunter. The Brown sister was scribbling something on a small piece of paper “Take Teacher Farshaw and…” she looked up to regard Rand for a heartbeat, and then there was a moment where Rand could actually see her dismissing him in her mind “to see the Mother, and make sure she gets this. For the Mother’s eyes only, understand?” she said as she continued to scribble things on the note until she ran out of space. She looked up again and the Novice visibly stiffened, then curtsied and took  the note, looked at Rand and Min, and out of pity for the poor girl Rand pulled Min who was still shooting daggers out of her eyes at the indifferent Aes Sedai.


	10. An Aes Sedai and a Cairhienin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's play spot the self insert (hint it is one of the only two OCs in the chapter)

“I hate her.” Min said as they descended the steps of the library and walked out on the courtyard.

“No you don’t, you’re just angry with her.” Rand said casually, truth be told, he was very angry with her as well though he was baffled by that himself. For the longest time he tried his best to be nondescript, he relished not being noticed, but occasionally - and more often as of late - being dismissed like that grated at him.

“She’s lying.”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“Is it?” She asked. The young Novice had ran across the courtyard, and when she noticed that Rand and Min lagged behind, turned and walked back fuming. Rand couldn’t help but smile at the young girl, and how she seemed to duck while running, no doubt to make herself as small as possible, either to avoid notice of adults or to easily squeeze between them while running. Probably both.

“I apologize dear, our old bones prevent us from keeping up.” Rand said.

The little girl just stared at him and said nothing, and then turned and resumed her journey though at a begrudging, much slower pace.

Rand stared at the giant Egwene statue dominating the courtyard. One of five such statues and the only one where there isn’t one of him right next to it. History - falsely - often attributes the Last Battle completely to Rand, though when it came to statues, Egwene had one over him.

“You can’t say you weren’t expecting this invitation.” Min said, breaking Rand out of his reverie.

He took his eyes off the statue and looked at Min, then at the Novice leading them, and then at the entrance to the Tower. “I suppose on some level I did. I am very good at avoiding thinking about things.”

“You think she wants something?” Min asked.

“I doubt it though who knows?” Rand mused “She doesn’t always ask for what she wants but sometimes you realize you’re giving it to her anyway.

“I think she’s lonely. I doubt she has any friends.”

“I suspect you are right. Even when she wasn’t Amyrlin, making friends was never one of her skills. Allies yes, friends, not really.” And Rand knew why. A Cierhenin and an Aes Sedai, a more dangerous combination he could not think of. People would wisely avoid associating with her more than strictly needed. People, he reflected with more than a touch of shame, including Rand himself.

“She has a Warder though.” Min said “He’s been with her since Merrilin died.”

“A Warder isn’t always the same as a friend.”

“No.”

Rand started to feel bad for Moiraine. She had a very unfair lot in life and she always took it as if it doesn’t matter, as if _she_ doesn’t matter. Always putting duty before herself and what she wanted. He was surprised when she became Amyrlin, he’d thought she’d retire, live somewhere far away from the world. He never knew the circumstances under which she was raised to the Seat although he knew they couldn’t be normal. All he knew was that it was shortly after Thom died.

Rand felt bad because he himself was one of the very few people who could offer friendship to Moiraine Damodred, he was someone she could trust and he had nothing to lose. But he chose to stay away from her, _just like I did with everyone else._

Several times they would lose sight of the Novice in the crowd, and she’d have to go back for them, fuming, until they cleared the lower levels and started ascending through the Ajahs quarters, where they only came across the occasional servant or a Sister or a tower initiate.

Rand was starting to feel winded when they finally came to the level in which the Amyrlin study was. Min was leaning heavily against him and he regretted not bringing her walking stick with him.

They were one turn away from the door to Moiraine’s study when Rand stopped and said “Young lady a moment please.” The Novice stopped and turned, then walked back to where they stood. Min regarded him with some curiosity as Rand sank to one knee with a loud grunt and said “Do you have pockets in this nice dress of yours?” she nodded and Rand produced a white paper obviously wrapped around a cylindrical object “Have you ever been to Tear?”

“No.” the Novice spoke for the first time, obviously impatient with the delay.

“There is a type of candy there, very popular, it’s called tropsicle.” He held the wrapped candy to her “It’s very delicious but it’s very hard so be careful not to hurt your teeth. Hide it well so the Mother wouldn’t find it, you can eat it at night in your chamber.” The Novice tentatively accepted the candy. Rand produced another “And this one to give to the novice who shares your chamber, so she wouldn’t tell on you.” She took the other one and stuffed both in her pockets “And we’re very sorry that we took this long to follow you. I know Novice’s schedules are very busy.”

“They are, but…it’s okay.” The novice said and finally smiled.

Rand smiled back and said “Run along, we can make it the rest of the way on our own.” and stood as she turned then ducked and ran ahead.

“You don’t keep candy in your pockets.” Min said.

“No, I made them up.”

“What about what you said? What happens to whoever lost them?”

“Are you trying to torment me?” Rand said and Min chuckled. He was happy she finally stopped being upset about what happened in the library.

“What if those who lost the candy were orphans?”

“Too bad about the book, yes?”

***

The entered the Keeper’s office. The Keeper of the Chronicles wasn’t there at the time, and Rand realized he hadn’t the faintest idea about the identity of the Keeper.

Across from the door they just walked in was the door to the Amyrlin’s study, to one side of the door was a chair, now occupied by the young Novice who brought Rand and Min here. She gave Rand a knowing smile. She seemed to enjoy having a secret the Amyrlin didn’t know.

Rand and Min walked in and they were greeted by the sight of Moiraine poring over some papers on her desk, and Rand had a strong memory flashback to the one time he met Siuan Sanche in Fal Dara when Moiraine finally looked up. She held them with hard eyes for a few moments until Rand finally bowed and said “Mother.”

Moiraine gestured to two chairs adjacent to her large desk, she then collected the papers she was working on while Min and Rand sat down, putting them aside she sat back, her head nearly a foot lower than the Flame of Tar Valon symbol engraved on the back of the seat. “You gave my Novice candy.” She said flatly while staring at Rand.

Min smiled but Rand frowned and said “I want to be surprised that you know. But for some reason, I am not. How do you even know that it was me and not Min?”

“Teacher Min wouldn’t do such a foolish thing.”

“It’s true I would not.” Min sounded very amused as she chimed.

“You haven’t taken it away from her?” Rand said Moiraine shook her head “Let her keep the candy. She’s what? Seven years old?”

“Nine.” Moiraine said sharply, like it made a difference. She sighed and her features softened a bit “That’s what I get for inviting you up here, trouble.”

“I gave a little child some Tairen candy, how is that trouble?”

“Well first I let some children get away with having unsanctioned candy, next thing I know the Hall is up in arms against me again and before we know it it’s another split.” Moiraine looked and sounded calm, but Rand knew that inside, she was very tense.

Min laughed softly and a second later Rand joined. “Forgive me Mother,” Min said “but this conversation reminded me of an argument I saw a friend of mine having with her daughter once. My friend had given her granddaughter some candy and the girl’s mother, my friend’s daughter, disapproved. In that context Rand is the grandmother and the young novice outside the granddaughter.”

“And I am Rand’s mother?” Moiraine said raising one eyebrow.

Min shrugged and replied “When we all first met Rand and I were barely more than children, now we look old enough to be your parents.”

It took a few seconds but Moiraine let out a short, yet very rich and melodic laugh. “That was another time,” she said after a while “Quite literally another age. None of us are the same person we were back then.”

“What was that saying you were very fond of?” Rand asked Moiraine “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills?”

Moiraine nodded. “You were here the day they announced me as the new Amyrlin.” She said looking at Rand “Yet you left without visiting.”

“I imagined you were quite busy that day.” He said “I almost thought you were too busy to know I was here, guess I was wrong on that account. I was surprised to hear you were raised, I never thought you’d accept. Well, I was more surprised to hear of Cadsuane’s death, I’ve always thought she’d outlive us all.”

Moiraine snorted and said “You really believe she is dead?”

Rand and Min’s eyebrows climbed to their forehead. Min spoke first “She’s still alive?”

“I don’t know but an accident, on a boat? Her body never recovered? Her leaving instructions for how to pick the new Amyrlin ‘just in case’? Let’s just say we all knew Cadsuane hated being Amyrlin and she’s confided in more than one person that she thought she was too old fashioned to lead the Tower in this new world. It was only a matter of time before she left.”

Rand was silent for a few moments before saying “Instructions to choose a new Amyrlin? She recommended you as her successor?”

“Yes. And she left instructions that her death be kept a secret until I was summoned.  I was cornered by her loyal sitters and summoned.” Moiraine said and Rand knew that by Tower custom, once she was summoned there was nothing she could do but accept. “And it’s not enough that she trapped me, she had to make a mess of things first and leave me to clean it up. Don’t get me wrong, I think she was right in her decisions, but she had no right to leave me to tidy things up after her.”

“You’re talking about the Red Ajah.” Min said and Rand looked at her.

“What about the Red Ajah?” Rand asked.

“You do not know? Really?” Moiriane asked him.

“I make it a point to stay away from Aes Sedai business.”

Moiraine took a deep breath and said “And we try to keep it our business as much as possible but word does get out. Before her….death, Cadsuane declared that the Red Ajah is no more, that it will no longer accept new initiates into their ranks, and that the remaining Red Sisters will be the last Red Aes Sedai in history.”

Rand’s jaw dropped “The Amyrlin doesn’t have that kind of power.”

“No, not alone anyway. But the Amyrlin and the Hall of the Tower together do.” Moiraine said “The Green Sitters were hers, she’s a legend in their Ajah and they would never go against her. The Blue were not difficult to convince, given their history with the Reds. The Gray’s saw the benefit for that decision, as relations with the Black Tower was a major concern of theirs at that time. The logic of the Red Ajah being obsolete since Saidin no longer drove its channelers mad swayed two of the White Sitters and the third conformed. And there are rumors of promises made in order to bring the Yellows and Browns on board. The only Sitters who were against the resolution were the Reds but the ban has already been passed by lesser consensus.”

Rand sat back, stunned, he would never have thought Cadsuane would do such a thing. _Although, she was always full of surprises._

“The best part was how she used Elaida’s actions against the Blue Ajah as precedent.” Moiraine said with a smile, which fainted then vanished a moment later “I understand her logic. There were two incidents of Red Sisters attacking Asha’man, unlawfully. It was only time before Logain demanded the disbandment of the Ajah and then it would be too late, the Tower can’t give in to outside demands. She had to take initiative. Her decree came right after the second attack. The attacks didn’t stop but now the Tower can say they are not sanctioned.”

Rand had heard of the problem of Red Sisters attacking innocent Asha’man. It had always worried him, he thought it might turn into a full scale war between the Towers, he was grateful Cadsuane prevented it. One more time Cadsuane saved him a lot of trouble. ”I never liked Cadsuane.” Rand said.

“Neither have I.” Min added.

“I don’t think anyone has ever liked Cadsuane.” Moiraine said “Admired her, yes. Many have, including me.” Rand looked up “She was an exemplary Green Ajah warrior, but she also hunted down False Dragons and caught Saidin Channelers like a Red. She was skilled with healing, she had a mind for logic, an extensive knowledge of history, she showed great diplomatic skills when she led the Tower, and time after time she had taken causes that weren’t hers, as her own. She is one of the few Amyrlin’s that were truly of all Ajahs.”

The silence that followed was broken by Min “Some people do not have a choice on whether they are liked or not.” she said in a careful tone “Those people, like Cadsuane, often have to contend with being admired, or, as in too many case, neither. And there are the rare ones who get both.” she paused for a moment as if collecting her thoughts “I admire you Moiraine, I know that many share my admiration as well, I have been teaching young students for almost all my life and I know the heroes they look up to. That said, and again I do admire you, I also like you.” Moiraine fixed her with an expressionless stare “I do, as a friend, and though circumstances prevented us from spending too much time getting to know each other, but I still always liked you.”

Min then turned towards Rand who shrugged and said “On our first meeting you saved my father’s life. You went on to save mine time and time again. I mean you did threaten to kill me early on in our relationship but what’s a little death threat between friends, right?” he chuckled and added “I cherish your friendship Moiraine, I always have. And I’ll also say that you’re not unlikable like Cadsuane was, you were just dealt a nasty lot in life, one that dictated that for your own safety and for the good of the world, you should distance everyone away from you.”

After a few moments Moiraine said “I don’t remember threatening to kill you.”

“You did. Me, Perrin and Mat. You said you would kill us yourself before you let the Dark One have us.” there was remembrance dawning in Moiraine’s eyes “It’s a pretty bad thing to say to a bunch of village boys barely out of their childhood who until recently thought Aes Sedai were creatures of myth who care nothing for the smallfolk.”

“I meant it then. Knowing what I know now, I stand by that statement.”

“Of course you do.” Both Moiraine and Min started laughing.

“So, you came looking for a book.” Moiraine said after a while “One that doesn’t exist, according to Mersee Sedai.”

“No,” Rand cut in “She said it doesn’t exist in all the twelve depositories.”

“Yes, and?” Moiraine asked calmly.

“What about the thirteenth depository?” Min looked up at that.

“Do you really believe that a secret depository exists?” Moiraine asked, still maintaining her calm, and putting on the serene Aes Sedai mask that Rand is all too familiar with.

Rand recognized this as an opportunity to get the upper hand on Moiraine for once, he knew for a fact that the thirteenth depository existed, and he intended to get her to admit to it “Well does it or does it not exist?” and before she answered he said “No long answers, no half truths, a simple yes or no, does the library have a secret thirteenth depository?”

Moiriane looked him straight in the eyes and without flinching said “The library, and yes I mean the one on the Aes Sedai complex from which you just came, does not have a thirteenth depository.”

Rand’s mouth hung open “But…I’ve been in it.”

“You’ve been what?” it was Moiriane’s turn to be surprised.

“I’ve been in the thirteenth depository.”

“How did you enter?” she asked sharply.

“How did you lie?” Rand asked more urgently.

She collected her composure, putting her calm façade back on and said “It has been moved. It’s no longer attached to the main library. Now tell me, how did you gain entry?”

“Quite easily in fact.” Rand said smugly but the lack of amusement on Moiraine’s face made him wipe the grin of his face and say “Before the Last Battle I needed every shred of knowledge about the Age of Legends and the War of Power I could get my hands on. Thom was actually the one who told me about it during our stay in Tear but I didn’t investigate it until after the Cleansing. It didn’t take me long to realize just how unguarded the White Tower was at the time against Saidin, and at the time most of the Tower Guard were tied up in the defense against Egwene’s siege. There wasn’t anything very useful there but I learned that being somewhere you’re not supposed to is very enjoyable.”

She sighed and gave him the Aes Sedai equivalent of a glare before turning to Min and saying “Why do you need that book?”

“It’s part of my research. Probably the last part.” she said “I am in the process of writing a new book.”

Moiraine considered for a few moments before saying “I also have been to the thirteenth depository, more than once. Although unlike Rand it has been completely within my right to enter it.” She paused for a few seconds before saying “And I do remember the book you’re asking about, mainly because as I looked through it I could not determine why it was there in the first place. As far as I could tell it had no business being in the secret archives. It’s one of the oldest books in the Tower’s possession and has been among the first books in the thirteenth depository, put there by some of the first Aes Sedai of the Third Age though, as I said, for reasons unexplained.” After another short pause she added “You do know I still can’t allow you access to it though.”

Disappointment flashed on Min’s face but before she could ask Moiraine to reconsider Rand said “But you will though, won’t you Mother?”

Moiraine turned towards him “It is not even in my power to invite someone outside the Tower to enter.”

She could read his intentions and he in turn could read the warning in her eyes, he chose to ignore it “Mother, with respect, you knew me when I was a cowardly little farmboy, do you think I would have hesitated because of the rules?”

“Yes.” she said firmly, “But Mat would have dragged you behind him to break those rules, not out of love for books but just because they are rules.” before Rand could say anything else she sighed and said “Of course I was always going to let her see it. This will get back to me you know, a Brown sitter always sits at the door. The Hall will know I let a friend in there.”

“I’ll owe you for that Mother.” Rand said “We both will.”

“You both owe me a lot already.” she dragged a piece of parchment and started to write something in it. Without looking up she called out “Serene.”

In a moment the young Novice ran through the door so quickly that her shoes skidded a little on the marble floor when she stopped before the large desk. She gave Moiraine a curtsy and said “Yes, Mother.”

“Go find my Warder, tell him I have need of him.”

“He is outside, Mother. He arrived a little while ago.”

Moiraine paused for a moment, closing her eyes then nodding to herself she said “Then please tell him to attend me. Thank you Serene.”

The girl curtsied again and ducked and ran out of the room.

“Does she run like this everywhere?” Min asked.

Moiraine let out an exasperated sigh “I stopped ordering her to walk slowly because at some point it’s better to give up than keep giving orders you know will be broken.” she finished what she was writing and rolled the paper into a scroll and started to wax it “There is a reason why I don’t regret never having children.”

“You’re quite fond of her, aren’t you?”Min asked. Moiraine just glanced at her and said nothing.

The Warder entered the room. A Shienaran, though taller than any Shienaran Rand remembered seeing. He looked to be approaching his fifth decade of age. He didn’t wear a long sword on his back though there was a slight tilt to his right shoulder which appears to be unused to the lack of weight on it. His top knot was streaked in white and he was dressed in a leather shirt with black breaches. “You asked for me, mother.” his voice was quite though a bit raspy.

“Yes, Gonar.” Moiraine said gesturing to Min “This is teacher Min Farshaw.”

Gonar bowed and said “Honor, Teacher.”

“And this is her travelling companion, you may call him…”

Rand took the queue and knowing that this Warder is probably used to Aes Sedai half truths he said “My name is Tamlin.”

He turned to Rand and seemed to squint for a moment, before his eyes widened suddenly. Rand could hear Moiraine faintly say “Gonar no,” before Gonar dropped on one knee, bowing his head in Rand’s direction and saying “My Lord Dragon. I am honored to be in your presence. My sword is yours, I stand ready.”

Rand raised one eyebrow, unable to speak. He turned to Moiraine who had her hand covering her face, shaking her head in exasperation. She got up and said “Gonar by the Light and my hope for salvation and rebirth you will stop this foolishness right now or you will regret it!”

Rand was still stunned, he glanced at Min who seemed amused at all this. He then looked at the door and then to Moiraine and said “The Novice, outside…”

“I had the room under Silence since you two walked in, don’t worry she only hears what I want her to hear.”

“I am sorry my Lord Dragon…” Gonar started to speak as he got up but stopped when Rand’s head snapped towards him.

“Ready for what exactly?” he asked, and even though he was aware of the anger in his voice, he did nothing to reign it in.

“My Lord?” The warder asked uncertain.

“You said you stand ready, ready for what?” the man’s lips moved uncertainly but had no retort. Rand’s anger drove him to his feet, suddenly Min stopped looking amused and started to look up at him with concern in her eyes. “The Last Battle is over, we won it, a long time ago. Everyone in this room but you fought in it, we fought and we lost more than we thought possible, more than we thought we had, more than we thought we could afford to lose and remain alive and yet her we are.

“We fought, all of us here and hundreds of thousands of others, so our children - and that includes you  - wouldn’t have to fight.” Rand was trembling with anger by then.

“But…my Lord…”

“But nothing.” Rand didn’t let him finish “It’s you, you know, the Borderlanders, that make my blood boil the most. For thousands of years you stood vigil, generation after generation, never resting for a second, keeping the world safe by keeping the shadow at bay. I have bought you your rest, and you’ve earned it. You can hang up your swords and enjoy this reprieve and it frustrates me that you won’t.”

“The Shadow never rests,” the Warder said defensively “the Shadow never dies.”

“Yes it does.” Rand spat back “And it has, in every meaningful way it has. It shall be reborn again one day as we all will, but until then, stop worrying about ghosts. The last roving band of Trollocs was spotted more than thirty years ago.” Rand’s tirade started faltering; he felt his anger receding “All the remaining shadowspawn now are on display in menageries.” he sighed and then said “I know how valuable traditions are to you, just, know that there is more in life than duty.” The Warder looked personally affronted at the last sentence.

“I will consider long your words, Lord Dragon.” Rand winced at the title but he let it slide. “It’s just…a blight that befell my generation that we were born too late to witness the glory of Tarmon Gaidon.”

Rand snorted as he lowered himself back on his chair, “Glory.” He put a lot of disdain in the word “The excuse of old men to make sense of a world that rejects sense, to justify - mainly to themselves - the losses they sustained on the field of battle. And while it is mostly for their own benefit, younger men like you will soak it up, idolize it, and eventually if you are very unlucky, use it in the very same way your fathers used it.”

“Rand that’s enough!” Min said firmly. Rand turned to her, then back at the Shienaran Warder, then he closed his eyes.

“I apologize, Gonar Gaidin.” He said “Please forgive me, I am just…I am old. I am very old and I have had my fair share of…glory.”

“There is nothing to forgive my Lord.” Gonar said in a chocked voice.

“I see some things never change, Rand al’Thor.” Moiraine said. Rand had no reply, she faced her Warder and said “Please escort Teacher Min and her companion to whom you will now refer to as Master Tamlin, or any other name or title for that matter as long as words Lord, Dragon, and Rand al’Thor are not included, understood?” she waited until he nodded and continued “You will take them to the thirteenth depository, you’ll probably find Desole Sedai there as usual, give her this,” she held the note she wrote and sealed earlier for him to take “They are to go in, but they are not to touch any book other than ‘the Grave and Possible Ways Back’, they are not to leave the library with it, they are not to wander around the library, and they are not to be alone for a single instant, understood?”

“Yes, Mother.” He said.

Moiraine then turned to Min and said “How good is your memory, Teacher?”

“Well enough, Mother.”

“Good, because you are not to write down any notes or copy anything from the text of the book.”

“That’s not fair.” Rand said.

“Be that as it may, it’s one of my conditions.” she said flatly “Do you accept?”

They both looked at Min who said “Yes, Mother. I accept.” then stood up.

Rand got to his feet too and looked at Moiraine and said “Always a pleasure, Mother.”

“I’d say the same Rand al’Thor but the three oaths would prevent me.” Rand laughed and along with Min followed Gonar out of the room, where he saw the little Novice who, according to the smudge just below her lips, didn’t listen to Rand’s advice about waiting until night to enjoy the candy he gave her.


	11. Pages from ages past

Gonar led them through a network of mostly hidden staircases that took them straight to the basement levels without going through the three ground levels open to the public. They walked in silence most of the way with Gonar a few steps ahead of Min and Rand.

After descending to the third level underground the corridors became much smaller when compared to the rest of the Tower. He took them right into one such corridor, ignoring doors dotting both walls on semi regular intervals.

The corridor took a circular shape, curving outwards. They walked close to two thirds of a circle that Rand judged to be at least twenty spans across when suddenly Gonar turned and pushed a section of the wall with nothing to differentiate it from any other part of the wall, it opened outwardly and he stepped through.

Rand and Min stood at the threshold for a moment before following into a smallish square room with a high ceiling, and a door almost hidden in the far corner.

“Gonar Gaidin,” Rand heard a voice of an older woman say a moment before the aged Aes Sedai came into view. As expected, the Shawl on her shoulder was fringed in Brown. She wore a shimmering brown satin dress with two rows of ruffles from the collarbone to the waist. She was sitting on a chair with a book in her lap which she peered at through a pair of thin wired spectacles “So the Amyrlin decided to pay another visit, has she?” the Aes Sedai said before looking at Rand and Min and saying “You’re not the Amyrlin.” in a very factual tone.

Rand fought the urge to say ‘Not for a  few millennia’ at the same time that Min, who was one step behind him, said in a voice only he could hear “Tell her you used to be once. Tell her!”

Rand couldn’t stifle the laugh that came out and that was when he finally noticed the last occupant of the room because she moved one hand to a sword strapped to her waist. Presumably the Aes Sedai’s Warder, she was a woman at most a decade younger than Rand himself, if that. Her mostly grey hair was streaked with gold, betraying its original color. She had the look of an Andoran, in fact she looked hauntingly like Thom Merrilin.

Rand raised one hand and said “I mean no offence, Aes Sedai. I merely laughed at how very unlikely I am to ever be an Amyrlin.” The Warder let go of the hilt of her sword but kept a near hateful eye on Rand.

Gonar cleared her throat and said “Desole Sedai, sorry for this intrusion. I carry a letter from the Amyrlin.”

He handed her the note Moiraine wrote and she adjusted her spectacles higher on her nose as she read it. “This is most outrageous,” she said after a few moments “The Amyrlin has no right to let people know this archive even exists, much less invite them in. The Hall will hear about this.”

“The Mother is well aware of that,” Gonar said in an unsure tone “And yet she makes exception for them because…” he looked at Rand “he knew…he once…” Rand raised one eyebrow at the man and was about to cut in when Min beat him to it.

“Forgive us, Desole Sedai. The Amyrlin and I are acquaintances and she had agreed to help me continue my research which has led me to a title supposed to be here in this archive. I am a scholar and-”

The Aes Sedai squinted past Rand at Min “Oh I haven’t seen you there. What research could have possibly led you here, my dear? You must know the Amyrlin can’t just let her friends visit. Who are you?”

“My name is Min Farshaw I run a school in Andor and…” she couldn’t continue as the Aes Sedai perked up so suddenly she seemed to leap out of the chair even though her bottom never really left it.

“Teacher Farshaw. Forgive me I didn’t recognize you in the dark.” she said cheerfully “We met once, in Lugard. The education symposium. I gave the lecture proposing Gateway schools.”

“I remember you Desole Sedai.” Min said, Rand thought she was probably lying.

“Afterwards we had a riveting discussion about your book, the one about variation in different types of power and how to handle it.”

“Yes, of course. And I promise to have a sit down with you and discuss it again,” Rand raised one eyebrow for a moment then he fought a grin and did his best to keep his expression neutral “but if you do not mind, I would rather get done with my research first.”

The Brown sitter hesitated for a few heartbeats before saying “This is a huge violation of Tower Custom. But I do see the wisdom in the Amyrlin’s decision to let you in.” she got up and walked to the obscure door and pushed it.

Through the Bond Rand could feel all the excitement that Min hid behind her calm demeanor. It was not just about that one book though, this was the most exclusive library in the world and she was about to walk right into it.

They walked through the door to find themselves on a wooden walkway a few paces wide with a wooden railing that looked down on two stories of basically little other than walls covered in bookcases. That room was much bigger than the original archive where the thirteenth depository was kept, but it did feel like a repurposed area. The wooden walkways that encircled the room were new, but the rest of the room was old - as expected of a room deep in the bowls of a Tower a few thousand year old. Rand suspected the walkways were constructed to give Aes Sedai a more dignified way to get at the taller shelves than ladders.

“The book you’re asking about,” Desole Sedai cut through Rand’s thoughts as she led them to the lower level of walkways “is a very controversial one. Mainly because nobody can figure out why it has been put in this archive. You can say that it, along with a couple of others like it, were one of the reasons why the thirteenth depository was moved. The old archive hosting it was already quite full, and after the Last Battle a new host of secret history was written to the point where books were stacked on the floor. On the floor! Can you imagine that?”

“How terrible.” Rand couldn’t stop himself from saying that but he did manage to reign in his sarcastic tone. Though Min and Gonar sniggered, it seemed the joke was lost on the Aes Sedai who kept going.

“Exactly. Some suggested the removal of some such titles, now that wouldn’t have been enough as a permanent solution but it would have helped a little. A lot of us, including myself, argued against it.” At that point Rand noticed how many bookcases against large sections of the walls were still empty. Apparently when relocating the archive they wanted to make sure the same problem wouldn’t arise for a while “It is here for a reason, we argued, even if that reason was lost to the ages,” she said as they finally descended to the ground level “But does it deserve to be on the same shelves as the secret history of the White Tower? They asked, and we answered: well not all secret histories are equal. For example, is the complete record of the Amyrlin’s wash room patterns across three centuries and seven Amyrlins really as important and deserves a spot on the same shelves as the detailed account of the secret war of 537 in…” she paused and turned around, eyeing Rand and Min and realizing she was blabbing and mentioned something she shouldn’t have.

“We will pretend we never heard that,” Min said raising her arms. Desole Sedai eyed her for a few moments and Rand thought she was about to have them arrested. Suddenly he was very aware of her silent Warder trailing them.

After a short but very tense moment the Aes Sedai turned away, and headed for a mostly empty bookcase with only one shelf holding books, and it was barely half full. “Here is the one you asked for, Teacher Farshaw.” she said pulling a very old looking large book. She gave it to Min and turned to her Warder and said “Would you be dear and find us some chairs? You too, Gonar Gaidin.” she turned back to Rand and Min and said “There are rarely ever more than one person in this room so no one bothered to set up a sitting areas.”

It took the Warders a few minutes to come by three chairs that were scattered around the library and bring them over. Min sat in one, immediately crossing her legs and laying the book on them “I never heard of this author before.” she said looking at the cover page “Altrein Raindoom.” Pronouncing the name slowly “That is not dramatic in anyway.”

Rand grunted a laugh which got a bit more forceful as he noticed the bewildered look on the Aes Sedai face before she finally got the joke. However something tugged at Rand’s memory faintly, like an almost imperceptible scratching by a very small claw on the inside of his skull. The name, he heard it somewhere, and there was a thread in his mind attached to it, but trying to grasp it felt like trying to grasp a puff of smoke, close your fist around it and it moves just out of your reach.

“Listen to this,” Min said “The first page: _Talking about the grave and how it’s possible to get back from it will have to be preceded at least in part with how we would get to it. There is a simple one word answer to that; live. That is what everyone who ever went to the grave did just before going there, although some would suggest, and a part of me is inclined to agree, that you do not stop living after dying, you just continue to do so in a manner unfamiliar to us on this side.”_ Min paused and flipped the page “There is more of this but essentially saying the same things until we get to this part: _this war between shadow and light, between Dragon and the Great Lord of the Dark, has been a very suitable time to study life and death and what, if anything, lies in between.”_

Min fell silent and the same realization passed between her, Rand, and the Aes Sedai. It was Gonar who finally put a voice to it “Great Lord of the Dark. That’s what Darkfriends used to call the Dark One, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Min confirmed “So this book was written by a Darkfriend during the War of Power. I wonder if Derian Sedai knew this when she recommended this book to me.”

That piece of information added some substance to the smoke Rand was trying to mentally grasp, but it wasn’t enough.

The Aes Sedai picked up another volume from the same shelf and settled down with her spectacles on the bridge of her nose to read it. The two Warders stood in shadowy corners where they almost completely disappeared to the point where it was easy to forget they were there, even Gonar who didn’t even wear his color shifting cloak. Rand sat with nothing to do but watch Min’s expression switch between complete concentration, grinning, and raising her eyebrow at any order, and through it all the undertone of excitement she felt bled through the Bond. That was enough to keep Rand from getting bored with the lack of any other activity.

“This part is interesting,” Min said and the Sitter looked up from the book she was reading as Min continued “ _as I have written in my previous publications, this war was inevitable. Every move anyone make lies on one side or another of an unseen line, with the Great Wheel being an agent of balance, the total sum of everything has to lay on that line, thus the war is ushered to chip away at two grand empires built on the two sides, and bring them both down to size.”_ Min then looked at the Aes Sedai “Is there any other books by this Altrein Raindoom?”

“No there isn’t,” she answered “and there are records of several journeys undertaken by Aes Sedai to search for the other publications he mentioned but nothing was ever found. We can assume they were lost during the War or the Breaking.”

Min looked a little disappointed but quickly dismissed it and looked back down at the book. She grabbed the part she already read which looked to be less than one tenth of the entire large book, and Rand knew she was already getting tired. “I am never going to finish this book today.” she noted.

“Yes but your visit here was a great violation of the rules,” the Aes Sedai said “we can never allow you back here again.”

Rand expected her to start arguing but she simply said “I understand.” he was about to step in and start making the argument for her when she looked up at him with a faint grin and said “I only wish I had something to read on the way home. It’s a long trip to Baerlon.” She kept staring at Rand who understood what she wanted and knew why she didn’t put up a fight. He shook his head slowly even though he knew this was one silent argument he was going to lost.

Without looking up Desole Sedai said “There are plenty of places around Tar Valon where you can buy a lot of good books to read.”

“Yes,” Min said distractedly, still staring at Rand “But none as interesting a read as this one.” she started pleading with her eyes and Rand knew he already lost. He focused on the book for one moment and nodded to her. A large smile spread across her face.

“Well I am afraid there is nothing I can help you with in that regard.” The Aes Sedai said.

“What? Oh, yeah it is no problem at all, Aes Sedai.” Min said and closed the book “Thank you for all you’ve done for me,” she held the book out to her.

The Aes Sedai looked a little perplexed “You can stay a little longer if you like,” she said slowly.

“No thank you. It is a little stuffy in here, understandable seeing how we are three levels beneath ground. And I am a little weary so I want to return to the inn, Rand?” she said looking at him, he got up off his chair and nodded.

The Brown Sitter who was very opposed to them entering the library a little while ago suddenly looked disappointed that they were leaving.

“We’ll still have that chat though, right?” she asked Min “About variations in powers?”

Min looked at her and flashed her a big smile “The very next time I set foot on Tower Ground I shall seek you out to make arrangements.” She then gave a slight bow of her head and turned to Gonar “Mind leading the way, Gonar Gaidin?”

“Honor to serve, Teacher.” he intoned with an obvious lack of enthusiasm in his voice that Rand started to regret his little outburst in Moiraine’s office. _The man is nearly fifty year old though,_ Rand thought, _he was bound to have a crisis of faith sooner or later, if he hadn’t one or ten already._

Rand and Min walked a few steps behind Gonar as they climbed out of the Tower’s basement. Min clasped her arm tightly onto Rand’s elbow, leaning heavily against him. He did his best to walk straight and not betray the fact that the constant climbing up and down steps they did today was pushing him towards fainting himself.

“You lied to her,” Rand told Min in a near whisper “Both, actually. Her and the other one from earlier.”

“Have I?” Min asked innocently.

“Yes. Your little Aes Sedai answer at the end doesn’t change the fact that you said you would sit down with them. Something I know you have no intention of doing.”

“Well I have no time for that. Quite literally in my case,” she said with a faint laugh “Besides, they were trying to keep a book away from me.”

“Oh well then they practically deserved it.” Rand stared at Gonar’s back, pointedly avoiding the glare Min was shooting him.


	12. Water and dirt

“It’s identical.” Min said holding the copy of the book that Rand made for her “Down to the creases in the pages. And this page, it’s falling off just like in the book in the Tower.”

After they left the Tower Gonar asked a young captain in the Tower Guard for a carriage and two horses to take Rand and Min to their inn. On their way up they asked the innkeeper for supper and once they entered their room, Min dived for the book. “Would you have preferred if I made it look new?” Rand asked, shrugging “I basically copied the thing. Not…not the text in it, its uh…I don’t know how to describe it better than its thread in the pattern.”

“And it was just conjured?” Min asked, still studying the book, likely looking for differences between it and the one she was reading earlier. Rand knew there won’t be any.

“Yes. I mean no. It’s not so simple. It’s really…” Rand took a deep breath and tried to organize his thoughts “Short answer: I don’t know. Slightly less short…I have learned that nothing just becomes…a thing. Nothing winks into existence, and similarly nothing ever really goes away, it just becomes something else.”

Min put down the book and sat cross-legged on the bed “Let’s think about this logically then. If you are right, and this book didn’t just suddenly…start existing, then it must have been something else, something that seemingly went away but in reality, according to you, became something else, right?”

Rand shrugged, he felt a little out of his depth “Sounds right, I think.”

“So maybe it was another book? That got modified to be this one? Does that mean a library or a school somewhere is now missing a book?” Min asked but Rand knew she wasn’t really looking for an answer “Or maybe it’s less simple than that. Everything is made out of a lot of other things. For example; this book consists of a cover, pages, and binding.” She said turning it in her hands “So maybe some books lost pages, others lost covers and even other books lost their bindings. But it goes deeper than that.” She started talking in the tone that Rand recognized as her ‘forgetting anyone else in the room with her’ tone. “The cover is likely wood wrapped in cowhide, the pages shredded wood and ink, and the binding likely gut-string, or maybe horsehair and sap. So maybe a tree lost some of its wood, a horse some of its hair, and a cow some of its hide? No that’s too silly but the concept stands, right?”

She looked at Rand who looked up and said “Probably yes. I don’t know you lost me half way…”

“Yes but why not go deeper? Most things the book is made out of come from trees, but where do trees come from?”

“The ground?” Rand said slowly.

She gave him an ‘are you dumb’ look and said “They don’t come through Gateways Rand. No I mean the body of the tree, the trunk and branches and leaves, they grow in a very similar way to how our bodies grow - with the nutrients they get from the soil and water from rivers or rain. So maybe by creating this book you didn’t take away another book, you just took some raindrops and soil or whatever those are made off.”

“Water and dirt?”

“Well what are water and dirt made out off?” she asked “Some scholars suggest that there are very small particles that make up everything in this world. They are just too small to see so they can’t prove it.”

She looked at him expectantly, Rand slowly opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before uncertainly saying “I…have no idea what does any of that mean.”

“It means that maybe when you conjure an orange you’re not stealing from a poor orphan, you just move some of those particles that make up all the things in the world into a new formation that makes oranges.”

“So you’re saying,” he started “that I have been worrying about nothing for the past four decades?”

Her eyes widened for a moment before saying “It’s just a theory of course, I can’t prove it without studying your powers farther.”

Rand smiled and said “Well you’re welcome to study my powers whenever you feel like it. Maybe that would be your next book after this one.”

Her face took on a more serious tone and she said “You know I can’t. Rand I know you have been…”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door and Rand got up and said “Supper!” with an exaggerated triumphant tone, to which she sighed and smiled as Rand continued “I know you are anxious to continue reading but first, a hearty meal.” he said as he headed for the door.

“No I am not reading anymore tonight.”

“Yeah right.” he said and flashed her a smile before turning and opening the door. He tried his hardest to smile at the serving girl who brought the supper, and when he failed he hoped the large tip he gave her made up for it. After closing the door he put the smile back on his face and turned back towards the room.


	13. The long road that's not long enough

Rand had a recurring trail of thoughts that his mind went through, more often than not, right after leaving a city - especially if the city was a particularly crowded one - and going into an open road with plains all around. That trail of thoughts begins with a box, one that he was stuffed into so long ago. When he was in that box there were times when he felt that its walls were closing in, that the box that was essentially his whole world was becoming smaller, and soon it would be too small to contain an object of Rand’s size and it will continue to shrink crushing his bones, mangling his flesh, one hair breadth at a time. He had episodes inside that box where he felt like the air was running out, like he had almost nothing left to breathe, like the box only contained a few more breaths of air and then he would suffocate.

Something, or rather, many things broke inside Rand in that box, and they were never mended even when he changed bodies. All this made the fact that he only survived because a mad man started whispering in his ear somehow less nonsensical than it should have been.

After the box the trail of thoughts takes him to a small cell he was imprisoned in while in Far Madding. Before the box he had no problem being in a small room, but after the box he found small areas with small or no windows daunting. The cell in Far Madding was the smallest room he has ever been in and once again, he felt the walls closing in, he felt the air running out, and only his madness prevented him from, well, going even madder.

Since then the threshold of how small a room that would trigger these effects became bigger. For example, he could never stay in an average inn room unless the shutters of all the windows were wide open, although when Min is with him, holding him until he fell asleep, the effects are greatly blunted.

The threshold never stopped growing but the bigger the space he was enclosed in the less it affected him until he noticed that he could never truly easily breathe and be at peace inside a city, which was a big part of the reason why he had spent most of his life in the wild.

“This is interesting,” Min said, providing Rand with a much needed escape from his thoughts. He glanced at her as she rode Samber at a slow walk beside his own mount. Unsurprisingly she gripped the saddle horn and the reigns distractedly in one hand, while the other, along with both her upper arms, wrestled to keep the large book she held open on the page she was reading. She started reading aloud for Rand “ _embedded_ _in everyone’s soul there is what I, for the purpose of this writing, will refer to as a core. That core plays an important role in defining a person, and in defining that person it also defines his or her purpose._

_“The purpose, for which the Wheel allowed a person’s thread to be spun again into the pattern, is engrained in them since birth. And it does not have to be a grand purpose like leading men into battle or making a scientific breakthrough. The purpose, after which all our cores are shaped which in turn shape us, can be something small like planting a particular tree under which a passerby will rest, or throwing a stone in a river that will eventually be a part of a dam made entirely of stones thrown in by hapless people, or even being seen in a crowd by someone and inspiring an idea that will aid them in finding the purpose of their core._

_“Very few lucky people will know their purpose early on in their lives, others will only find it when they come upon it, but for the vast majority of you, you will probably go your entire lives without knowing what great effects you were born to take a part of. But with a clear, unobstructed view of the Wheel as it spins all our threads in the Pattern, a view afforded only for the Great Serpent, I believe one would see each person’s core closely attached to that person’s thread.”_ she paused and looked at Rand and said “I am still unsure if this is uplifting or really very grim.”

Rand shrugged and said “I can tell you one thing, there aren’t any cores attached to people’s Threads in the Patterns. Not that I can see anyway.”

“So it’s all untrue?”

Rand shrugged again “How should I know? All I can tell you is what I believe, and what I believe is that there is no great divining force to find a purpose for you. That is not how the Wheel works, I think. We all have to give meanings to our own lives.”

“I would agree with you, if Ta’veren weren’t a thing that exists.” She noted, looking at Rand with great interest in what he was saying “The Wheel clearly chose for them.”

Rand felt a great need to say something clever “That’s not…” he started then stopped before he decided to go at it from a different angle “The Wheel is a thing of balance, we all know that. Think of it as the most sophisticated machine imaginable, its task very simple in premise yet nearly impossible to conceive off with our human minds; correct any irregularities and restore balance, because unbalance can eventually destroy the world.” he took a deep breath before he continued, glancing to make sure she still looked interested, _good I haven’t said something dumb, yet_ “It is a very busy machine though, the world is full of irregularities, and ones we don’t even see. For example, imagine butterflies living in a meadow. Suddenly the number of butterflies rose too high, the Wheel then might send one particular butterfly to lead the other butterflies to a different meadow that has too little or no butterflies, thus restoring balance.” he fell silent for a moment then decided to add “A Ta’veren butterfly.”

He looked at Min who kept her face impassive for a while before saying “Ta’veren butterfly,” and then breaking into laughter.

Rand hung his head and said “I was doing so well.”

She was still laughing and suddenly she yelped and tried to catch the book before it fell out of her hand, succeeding in the last moment, while also managing to startle her horse. After securing the book and the reins she said “You were doing well. Just because I laughed doesn’t mean you said something dumb.”

“Yes it does.” he said grumpily.

“Well, maybe.” she said with a faint laugh “But the point you made was valid. Perhaps Ta’veren are the exception to the rule. But, and here is where I get speculative, what if they really aren’t? What if we are all Ta’veren, to varying degrees?” Rand looked at her curiously “I mean, you are Ta’veren…”

“I was Ta’veren.” Rand cut in.

“You were Ta’veren. Some say the strongest Ta’veren since Artur Hawkwing, stronger than Hawkwing himself. Right?” Rand nodded “That means there are varying levels in the power of being Ta’veren. What if the average person is also Ta’veren, just much, much weaker than you, Mat, Perrin, or Hawkwing?”

“I am not sure I understand. What are you suggesting?” Rand asked.

“What if Ta’veren is not really something you are, but something you have. An allowance by the Great Wheel of a certain power that helps you to accomplish a certain purpose you were born for.”

“Is that what you believe?” Rand asked her.

Min shrugged and said “It is not about what I believe. My job is to ask questions, all the questions I can find, then try to find answers to them. What I truly believe is that both options are possible and without further information we cannot know for sure.”

After a moment Rand took to process what she said he chuckled and said “I would make a horrible scholar. I would be a terrible Teacher.”

“You would make a good teacher.” Min countered. “You even make very good metaphors which are a great tool to help students understand what you are saying.”

“Metaophors?”

“Ta’veren Butterflies.” she said and started laughing again.

“Pay attention to the road please.”

***

A part of Rand regretted that he hadn’t made any other arrangements for the trip from Tar Valon to baerlon since it was a very long ride that would be very taxing on both their health, yet another part of him was glad for it. The way they traveled, even though they cut across the woods instead of sticking to the longer main roads, was bound to take longer as their age didn’t allow for any sort of haste. That pleased him for he didn’t want the journey to end. Despite all that though, by the third night it became increasingly clear that no matter how hard he tried to savor the moment, no matter how hard, long, or tedious the journey was, time was intent on flying by whether Rand liked it or not.

They found a clearing to make camp for the night. Rand pitched the tent that they will very likely ignore right next to a large fallen tree, and lit a fire to take the slight chill off the air while Min sat on the log with the book in her lap. He could see she was nearing the end of it. He laid a blanket that he folded once lengthwise on the ground in front of the log with only a small stretch of the blanket on it, he then sat on the blanket with his back to the log right next to Min.

“So this is the part of the book that I made this trip for,” she said without taking her eyes off it “ _consider how that the Great Lord of the Dark, Lord of the Grave, the only known entity that can willingly bring a person back from death, cannot in fact resurrect someone who died by Balefire. Now also consider the fact that these resurrections are akin to rebirth by the will of the Wheel, as in, the same spirit returns inhabiting a different body. We can then conclude that those who die with Balefire can never be reborn into the Pattern again forevermore.”_ she held her place in the book and got off the log, lowered herself in Rand’s lap while saying “He sounds awfully sure of himself, this Altrein Raindoom. This is the passage referenced in the book I got in Far Madding.”

The name still gnawed at the inside of Rand’s skull. “And you still disagree?”

“Well yes,” she said settling herself on his outstretched legs, leaning her back against his chest “for one thing, these resurrections are not exactly the same as rebirth. For one thing those brought back from the dead retained their memories, right?” she looked at Rand for confirmation as he had more experience dealing with the Forsaken - the class of people who experienced the most resurrections - than anyone else. He nodded and she continued “I would say this is enough to put doubt in this theory. Another problem with that theory I have been thinking about actually links to what you said in Tar Valon, nothing ever really goes away, it just changes form and comes back. I think the same applies to people, the same people who exist have always existed, they’re born, live, and die to be reborn again in time. If death by Balefire meant you can never be reborn, and if everyone who ever claimed to be an expert on the matter is correct and the world really is millions and millions of years old, chances are, everyone would be die by balefire at some age or another. And no one would be left to be reborn.”

“That makes sense,” Rand said “In a very horrifying way.”

She settled back with her head just under his chin and said “Well like I told you before, it is almost impossible to test this theory without records that are kept across literal ages. And we have no idea how the world will look like in the next age so…”

“If your book survives and I really hope it does, maybe they will find a way to test the hypothesis. To see who is right, you or this…Raindoom.”

“I am very uninclined to believe him,” Min said “And not just because he disagrees with me, he seems very unhinged for a scholar. Very unorganized. This book is more of a collection of thoughts and opinions than the factual research it is presented to be in the introduction. There are no citations and no references to any other books except the ones he himself authored, and that part that was almost entirely about Balefire suddenly shifts into what can only be described as ramblings regarding the end of the world.”

Rand furrowed his eyebrows at that. “Can you read that part to me?”

“Which part? The end of the world?”

“Yes.”

Min reopened the book and fidgeted a little until she got in a position where the fire threw light on the pages since the sun was getting too low to read by. She flipped through the pages and finally laid a hand on one and said “Here it is. He mentions something about Balefire being a weave that can be used to destroy the Pattern itself and from there he goes on a tangent that never ends about the end of the world. Here listen to this; _the inevitability of the world ending can be concluded simply by the fact that the world exists. The world was created, and thus, in keeping with the nature of the Wheel that strives to balance everything, we can safely assume that the world will one day be destroyed. But the world is too complex to be brought to an end by a seemingly random event and so the Wheel will have to spin an individual into existence whose core will be geared towards ending the world. Such an individual will be born with enough power, or at least the chance at enough power to accomplish this task. He will also need to have enough knowledge of the Wheel and the Pattern to come to the conclusion that the world must be annihilated.”_ Min paused for a while. The words were lighting a forgotten candle in Rand’s mind, or perhaps more aptly, they were stoking the flame “What kind of monster is this?” she stopped reading aloud, instead she skimmed through the line touching them with a shaking hand, occasionally pronouncing a word, enough words for Rand to get the gist until she came onto a particular paragraph where she froze. “Burn me,” she said with a soft voice “ _I have come to realize that ending the world is not only inevitable, it has become a necessity, this very long cycle of creation and destruction needs to be brought to its logical conclusion. And when I am done, there will be nothing and nowhere to be reborn into. Finally, the long awaited, much deserved, abyssal rest. For everyone.”_

A box clicked open in Rand’s brain “Blood and bloody ashes.” he said softly.

“I know.”

“No, I mean yes that is horrible but…” he chuckled and said “I know who wrote this book,” he reached for it and flipped it to its cover “I know who this Altrein Raindoom really is. It’s uh…what do you call it? A rearrangement of the letters in a certain word to make up a different word?”

“An anagram?”

“Yes, that. Altrein Raindoom is an anagram of the name of the author, a fake name he wrote under, a name used by Elan Morin Tedronai, later known as Ishamael.”

Min stared hard at the name, Rand assumed she was rearranging the letters in her head “Blood and bloody ashes.” She said after she was done. “He was a madman. I mean I already knew that but…he was a madman.”

“That he was and more. Be glad you never met his even madder self, the one whose face I have been wearing for fifty years.”

“To be fair I never met this one either. Though I can only imagine how much more bizarre a book written by Moridin would have been.” she said and a shiver strong enough for Rand to feel ran through her.

Rand wrapped his arms around her “I never actually met Ishamael. By the time I was born he was Ba’alzamon and Ba’alzamon was…let’s just say he was nothing like the Elan Morin in Lews Therin’s memories. I did meet Moridin a handful of times, and he was much more unpredictable, more unhinged than Elan Morin - again going by Lews Therin’s memories. Him and me, we have always been two sides of the same coin, and being an opposite of him was one of the things that actually remedied my self-hatred.”

Min closed the book and set it aside “Let’s not speak of it anymore this night. Lest I lose sleep.”

“Too late for me on that account.” Rand said laughing.

Min wiggled softly in his arms until he let go off her, she started getting up “I’ll prepare the meal tonight. Do we still have wine?”

“We have plenty, I think.” Rand said distractedly. When her back was turned he touched the book tentatively, feeling an odd sensation that he could only interpret as nostalgia on a level he was entirely unfamiliar with. _Am I so old that I miss my nemesis?_

_***_

Over the next few days Min regained any interest she had lost in the book since she found out who wrote it, even going back and reading parts she skimmed over. “You know I would do anything to turn this into public knowledge.”

“I thought you said the book wasn’t very informative,” Rand said dropping down on a rock. It has been about a week since they left Tar Valon, he estimated they were somewhere smack in the middle of the Caralain Grass. They have been skirting the Black Hills almost since they left until they cleared it that morning. From there it was a nearly open plain all the way to Baerlon. At least that’s what the maps say but Rand knew several new, small farming villages were popping up everywhere around this rich, fertile land.

Min was sitting on another rock nearby in the spot they chose to take their midday rest in. “Maybe not informative on the subjects it advertises on the cover and in the introduction, but it is a wonderful insight into the mind of one of the most infamous human beings in known history.”

Rand said nothing as he ate his lunch so she continued “It’s fascinating because I know in my heart that the conclusions he comes to are wrong, because they go against everything I believe in, and I have a lot of people who agree with me on this, but,” she paused and looked up, reached down to the bowl she set by her side and broke off a piece of bread “the disconcerting part is that he did not lay his opinions as facts, but as conclusions he arrived at after some very logical reasoning, and he included how he arrived at those opinions and it is in a very similar manner to how I arrive at my own views and opinions leading to believe that…can I be wrong? Am I deluding myself?” she popped the piece of bread in her mouth while looking at Rand.

“One can use logic to justify anything.” Rand said hoping that he sounded smart.

“No Rand, one can’t.” she said around the food in her mouth, before swallowing and continuing “When a person does that it is usually very easy to find problems with their logic, here…apart from a few megalomaniacal conclusions that, knowing what I know now, aren’t entirely unjustifiable, his logic is completely sound. I would arrive at the same conclusions had I been inclined to, had I the same world views as he did. And yet…how can logic, the most impartial tool of deduction we have, produce two opposite results? One of us is wrong and how can I say with any measure of certainty that it is not me?”

“Maybe you are dealing too much in absolutes.” Rand said while chewing the last piece of cheese “Master Fel once told me that the truth lies somewhere near the center, never on the center itself, never on either side. To be honest I never fully understood half of what he said.” he then shrugged as if saying ‘that’s all I have got’.

And it seemed it was enough for now as Min sighed and said “I suppose you are correct. Ishamael wanted to end the world, I want it to continue but to tell you the truth, if I think about it I can probably come up with a few reasons why the world should end, so he was at least part right.”

“Having some personal understanding of Elan, I know he would not admit that you are partly right yourself. Which makes you more right.”

“In the pursuit of knowledge there is no such thing as more right.” Min stated sternly “But…yes.”

Rand laughed, dusted his hands and started to prepare their pipes as Min finished her lunch. He lit hers, gave it to her then lit his and sat down on the same rock as her, their shoulders touching. Seemingly on instinct she rested her head on his shoulder. He looked up and his eyes found Dragonmount. He gestured to it with his head and said “That mountain almost drove me insane a few times when I thought about it too hard. Ishamael had a hand in that.”

“Why would it bother you?” Min asked “You are not Lews Therin.”

“Oh but I am, in a manner of speaking. And in a bizarre way I doubt it would have bothered Lews Therin that much since he never actually saw it, and he does not know what it is.” Rand said trapping the pipe between his teeth and wrapping his arm around Min, taking the pipe out with the other hand he said “I don’t even think he knew a mountain came out of his rather extravagant suicide. I mean he did make fun of Elan a few times because of his theatrical tendencies but you have to admit,” he gestured with his pipe towards the mountain “using a lightning bolt powerful enough to leave a mountain in its wake to kill someone…that is a declaration of how much you hate that person as much as anything.”

After a few silent moments Min said “Can you imagine hating yourself that much?”

“Fortunately, I can’t. Though I have an idea how it felt, I did have him in my head for a while. And you know what? He did not hate Ishamael, he hated what he had done but in the end, he still viewed him more as a friend who lost his way than an enemy. He pitied him. Well, we have that in common.”

“You pity that monster?”

“He and I, we are not…we are opposites, and as far as we are concerned, his core theory applies.” Rand struggled to form his thoughts into words “We represent separate sides inherent in human souls, but multiplied a hundredfold, a thousnadfold even, so that our clash would produce a clear winner, unlike all the others, less than pure, small clashes. I represent the desire to continue, he represents the desire to end. Most people have both in them as you have alluded to a minute ago, but I doubt many, or any really, like us, have only one. I have always wanted to continue, while he wanted nothing more than an end, one after which there was no more. The very act of existing is akin to torture to him. So yes, I do pity him a little.”

“Well when you put it that way,” she said with a soft laugh. After a while she said “We should get going, we don’t want to lose all the day light.”

“We always make camp long before sundown, we are not losing anything really.” Rand said but got up anyway. Holding the pipe in his mouth he helped Min to her feet and they started walking to where they left the horses to graze.

***

The trip was drawing to the dreaded end, and Rand was finding it harder and harder to enjoy his time with Min knowing that soon they will be back in Baerlon where she will return to being the Teacher and he will be her visiting friend again. At least for a while.

They were taking their time. As the journey took a toll on them they were covering less and less distance each day, but soon enough they were crossing the river Mantherendrelle near the area where Shadar Logoth used to be, and he knew in a day, maybe two at the most, they will spot the walls of Baerlon.

His thoughts kept going back to Shadar Logoth, which was why he nearly snorted when Min said “You are thinking about Aridhol, aren’t you?”

“Elmindreda Farshaw you scare me when you do this.” he said trying to suppress a laughter at the wince Min gave when he uttered her unshortened name.

“It is not my fault that you are very easy to read.” She said smiling.

“It is still scary.”

She laughed for a moment longer then said “You know there are people who are now grandparents who have were born in a world where Aridhol does not exist?” she stretched her back seemingly trying to straighten a kink in her muscles, hours in the saddle everyday is not good for people their age. “I mean you wiped it off the map, I was there that day, and now it only lives in memories and some obscure history books.”

Rand shrugged and said “In my defense its only inhabitant at the time was an evil spirit, and it didn’t even die when I obliterated the city.”

“That is not my point,” Min said “My point is, how long before it becomes a spook story? A myth that no one truly believes?”

“I don’t think that would take very long. I mean, in our time it existed but very few knew of it.”

Min nodded and said nothing.

They rode in silence for a while and Rand prepared both pipes for a smoke and when Min took hers she started dragging from it furiously, Rand knew something was on her mind but her emotions through the Bond were nothing out of the ordinary, maybe a little nervousness but he attributed that to their eminent return.

“Is there something on your mind?” he asked her.

She looked at him a little nervously and said “I know you do not like to talk about this but…I have a question, about your power…I”

He cut her off saying “You can ask me anything.”

She took a deep breath to steel herself and asked a question Rand could not have anticipated had he a hundred years to guess “Can you bring someone back from death?”

He could physically feel the color drain from his face, his hand trembled on the saddle horn and his heart seemed to be in a competition to find the shortest definition of the phrase ‘ten heartbeats’.

Min noticed his reaction and quickly said “I am sorry, please forget I said anything.”

It took Rand more than a few hundred heartbeats, normal ones, to finally find his voice and say “What are you…asking me?”

“Nothing, please forget it I…” she sighed and said “The book, Ishamael’s book, talked about threads and what probably happened to people’s threads when they died and I was wondering since you said you can see threads and manipulate them to an extent if…” she paused and her eyes widened for a second and said “blood and ashes I am sorry I was just…I was thinking about my book and how I can do all the research I want and not come to a source close to you and…”

“It’s alright Min,” Rand said softly and found the ability to smile at her “Really, the question just caught me off guard that’s all.” And it was not a topic Rand liked to think about for many reasons, among them the image that flashed in his head the second Min spoke her question, the image of a dead little girl in the Stone of Tear, how he was trying to move her, trying to pump life into her. At a time when he was starting to feel very powerful as he was discovering Saidin, he never felt more powerless. Min was about to speak again when he said “I do not know. That question falls under the category of ‘I would much rather not find out if my powers have a limit or not’. I never tried…”

“I never thought you tried.” Min said tentatively “You are averse to conjuring an orange lest you steal it from someone, I can only imagine how you feel about life.”

“But I came close once.” She looked at him with a shocked expression as he continued “I was the Seven Towers when Lan died. I heard he was dying so of course I went. He was my friend, and Nynaeve is as close to a sister as I have ever had. And poor Nynaeve, you know her, she did the impossible time after time just because she refused to admit it was impossible. For her to watch him die, and not be able to help him…I can only imagine what it was like for her, to come face to face with the limitations of the One Power in the worst way possible.

“When I went to their palace in the Seven Towers Lan had me urge her to get some rest. She had been up for days next to his bed and I, somehow, convinced her to go lay down and I promised her I would take care of him. When she finally left he got out of bed,” Rand gave a short laugh “she wouldn’t let him get out of bed or do anything, he said he had missed his chair.

“He said…” Rand swallowed and fought to keep his voice level “he laughed and made jokes and offered me wine though by then he was too weak to even call for the servant right outside the door. He talked about how…how more than even me, he had two lives. That until the Last Battle he was the Warder, the warrior who lived by the adage that duty was heavier than a mountain and death is lighter than a feather, that he lived an entire life, nearly half a century, thinking that that was all there is for him but then Nynaeve came into his life, the Last Battle happened, and the war he thought he’d be fighting all his life, the one he never thought he’d win, was won.

“Then began his other life, Lan King of Malkier, the one who rebuilt it, who reclaimed it from the ruins of the Blight. To that Lan duty was not warfare, duty was helping his people, finding their problems and working to solve them, making the land of his father and mother into a kingdom once more, a place where people can live and be happy. To this Lan duty was not heavier than a mountain, he enjoyed working for his people, his duty brought him pleasure. And to this Lan, death…death was not lighter than a feather. He confessed that to me, the last time we spoke. Lan, the person who did so many death defying acts that you would think he had a death wish and death was just too frightened to claim him, Lan who never valued his life and there are at least a few thousand people who can say the phrase ‘he risked his life to save mine’, did not want to die. And if that is not irony….”

Neither spoke for a while until Min said “You want to make camp for the night.”

Rand looked at his forgotten pipe in his hand and then up at the setting sun and said “Yes, that would be good.”

The both dismounted and walked the horses to an area that looked suitable for a camp. Rand began unbridling the horses when he spoke “He died that very same night. And I spent the next few days contemplating bringing him back. How I would do it and how I would deal with anyone who questioned what happened. I decided against it, as you guessed, but Nynaeve was beside herself with grief and I could not bear face her knowing I could have done something about it but chose not to. I still can’t face her to this day.”

“You are being unfair to yourself.” Min said flatly as she started unpacking their food.

“I know I just…” he smiled at her and said “Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh you thought I was going to leave this fic without talking about the death of everyone's favorite character? You were wrong my friend. YOU WERE WRONG.
> 
>  
> 
> i hate myself so much


	14. Baerlon

For someone with near limitless powers, Rand felt helpless as the distance disappeared under the horses’ hooves. Of course one could argue that his power is only limited by his unwillingness to use it, his self imposed ethical obligation to not give himself anything others couldn’t afford lest he be stealing from them. He stayed awake at night though, wondering if he could actually keep this journey perpetually going forever, and if he should do it if it turned out he could. He wondered if he would do that to Min. The answer was, to at least two of those questions, of course not.

Early the following day Rand and Min found themselves emerging from the Caralain Grass woods and onto the Caemlyn-Baerlon road. It took less than half a day before they spotted the first signs of the gates.

Once in the city things got out of Rand’s control completely. Though he never really felt they were in his control in the first place, he did feel like he suddenly became more passive, with no more decision to make about this journey. Simply because the journey had come to an end, to its much dreaded end.

Baerlon hasn’t changed that much since Rand first saw it as a youth. It was unique in that whenever Rand revisited a place he hasn’t been since he was young, he always felt that the place diminished in size somehow, however with Baerlon he always felt he was the one who grew smaller. Perhaps because a lot of the buildings had their sizes increased, and in a lot of the cases demolished and had bigger buildings erected in their places. Though the same feel of the city remained. And there were definitely a lot more people.

Min was an easily recognizable figure in the city. A fact made very obvious as they walked through the streets towards her home, with Rand pulling the reigns of all three horses while Min walked with her walking stick, as many people stopped and greeted her. Some would say she was second only to the mayor, others would tell you that when it came to influence, the mayor was second only to Min.

They arrived at the building that once used to be an inn owned and ran by Min’s aunts. It had fallen to her to run it - since she had only one living cousin when the last of her aunts died and he had left Andor long ago and clearly expressed no desire to run the family business - and since Min did not know much about innkeeping and had no desire to learn, she converted it to an executive building for the school. Her old room in it from when she was a little girl is still her bedroom, she converted an adjacent storage space into a large office for herself, a few rooms were used for storage of both equipment and records, and the rest were turned into offices for other teachers and staff members. The main room has remained largely the same, with food and drinks being served, and over the years it had become a center for scholarly debates. Or so Rand had heard.

Once inside Min was immediately beset by a young man, very well dressed, with a bag slung over one shoulder which Rand could see held a number of small notebooks. “Teacher! Welcome back.”

“Hello Saiem.” Min said and the weariness in her voice was apparently lost on the very enthusiastic young man.

“We received the notes you sent from Caemlyn. Mistress Lor poured over them day and night since then. She says they are almost ready, all that is needed is your opinion on a few matters, and of course the last remaining part about Balefire.” he wiped some sweat from his forehead and said “You have that, don’t you?”

“Yes, uh…” Min looked around, then remembered that most of her notes were in the baggage the nice man at the door took up to her room “I will have them delivered to her as soon as I can, Saiem, I…”

“When can we expect them?” he blushed and said “I have been helping her with it, very exciting.”

Min was about to say something but Rand cut in and said “Why don’t you let the Teacher rest for a while? We’ve had a very long journey.” Min gave him an accusatory look, maybe for speaking over her, maybe for the sharp note in his voice, but the useless young man was getting on Rand’s nerve.

For his part Saiem gave Rand a ‘who are you and why are you here?’ look. The kind of look that would have made Rand want to punch him, at least three times, but with all the things on Rand’s mind he was quickly dismissing him. “This is Master Tamlin, a dear friend of mine.” Min said and then turned to Rand and said “Saiem here is a one of our younger teachers. He achieved remarkable things for his young age.” she then turned to the little whelp and said “Master Tamlin is right, I do need rest. I will have Corry get the notes to Lor’s office as soon as I get to my room, and I will join you later.” he was about to say something but Min spoke first “Thank you, Saiem.”

The young man’s mouth hung open for a second before he said “My pleasure, Teacher.” before he walked away.

Min then took Rand’s hand and started leading him towards the back, where her room was “How many times do you want to punch him?”

“None.” Rand said simply.

“Don’t lie to me Rand al’Thor. You thought about punching him and you know it.”

“No I didn’t.” Rand insisted stubbornly.

Min laughed and said “But I do have a lot of work. I added a chapter since I have sent them the notes so if they had already made an index, it will have to be reworked.”

“Rest first, and food.” Rand said “To be honest I grew tired of the stale bread and fruits we had on our trip over, I am ready for something more palatable.”

“I won’t disagree there.” Min said “And I finally have a good title…”


	15. Death and other mundane matters

Rand studied the cover of the finished book. One of the only three preliminary copies finished as of yet - it wasn’t properly bound because these working copies were edited heavily before finally arriving at the finished product. Soon more will be produced and distributed. The machine they invented in Ceirhein made books a lot more widely available, and more than once Min had expressed how exciting it is.

It had been nearly a week since they arrived in Baerlon, and finally work on the book has been completed. Rand was laying in Min’s bed, she would soon join him in her room, she was probably making some final arrangements.

_Death and other mundane matters…_

“How do you come up with titles like these?” Rand asked Min as she walked through the door. The room was small. She never moved to a larger one despite owning the building. It had a small bed, big enough for one person, or two people who didn’t mind sharing personal spaces. The bed was pushed against the back and left walls, with the right wall covered in framed accolades. The door was in the far wall so being on the bed, Rand was facing it when Min walked in.

She shrugged and said “I don’t know. I just thought of a title that described the book well. It is mainly about death but there other matters in there as well, all just as mundane as death.”

“Death is not mundane.”

“Oh yes it is.” Min dragged a chair from the side and sat on it, putting her legs up on the bed over Rand’s own. She had with her a bowl full of small pastries that she liked so much but had quit eating long ago because they were very unhealthy for her. “Death is perhaps the most mundane thing a person goes through. For one thing we all know it is coming one day. No one is sure they will get married or achieve their dreams, but everyone is certain they’ll die.”

“That does not make it mundane.” Rand said “Death is…an end to things, an end to the life you have lived, all the memories you have collected, all the things you have built, all the things you were in the process of building, they end.”

“Well, exactly.” she said around a piece of pastry before swallowing “All those things belong to life. Life is exciting, full of new things to experience. You said it, you can experience as much as you can in this world, nearly all of it, only to turn around and find new things have came up for you to experience. Life is full of wonder, happiness and sadness, memories old and new, friends to be made and books to be read,” she paused for a moment as she picked up another pastry “Compared to all that,” she titled her head then continued “death is pretty mundane.”

Rand tried to think of an argument against that, he couldn’t.

“Of course,” she started again “you would have known that had you read the book in your hand. I just quoted a page from the introduction. It is a book you helped write so you might as well read it.”

“I will. Eventually.” i _f it doesn’t hurt too much._

“I hope it doesn’t turn out too painful.”

Rand looked up, he could feel his heart beating faster. “Why would it be painful?”

“You know why.” She said levelly “You know and you have been pushing it to the back of your mind, doing your best to avoid thinking about it. I know you excel in that, but it never completely left your thoughts, has it?” before he could answer she said “of course not. Explains all the sleepless nights during our journey. I would have brought it up but in doing so I would bring up what you are trying so hard to bury.”

“Min I…” he was about to deny again but he couldn’t. He knew exactly what she was talking about.

His mind wandered back a half a dozen weeks or so, when he found a letter from Min left for him in a tavern in Illian, asking to see him. He went to her immediately and that night, she told him the worst thing he had ever heard. _I am going to die, very soon. I can see it in the auras around the people close to me, and yours confirmed it beyond any doubts._ Rand did not know how to feel about that, to be the one who brought the news of Min’s death. He became the harbinger of death for the woman he loved the most.

 _I am dying soon, but first I will publish a new book. And I still need to do some research. I have to travel and I thought maybe you would like to join me?_ Rand refused to believe, of course, and not long after he pushed it completely out of his mind, leaving it to be dealt with by his future self. Like all things a person tries to bury in his mind though, bits of it kept bubbling up to the surface whether he liked it or not.

“Can you…” Rand started then hesitated “Can you not be wrong about this?”

“Well,” she said popping the last pastry in her mouth before getting up and setting the bowl aside “We will know soon enough.” Once she moved her legs off his he sat up on the bed.

“What...?”

“It’s time. The book is done. I gave it all I have to give. It’s out of my hand now. I knew that was the last thing I will do before I die. And now,” she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and added in a hushed tone “I have done it.”

“Min please.” Rand said, feeling a tear forming at the corner of his eye “I can’t…I can’t just let you go.”

“You say this like I have choice to make.” Min said, her voice hinting at the emotions she is trying to hide “I don’t. I may have been like any normal person, I would have died and you would have heard about it a few days later but I am not a normal person, I have been given this gift which occasionally feels like a curse, and I knew when I was going to die and let me tell you,” her voice was starting to shake “it’s not a good thing to know.”

“You could have left the book unfinished.” Rand said “You could have never written it if you knew you would die right after.”

“And that will let me live forever?” she asked incredulously “That would have just taken it out of my control completely.” He was about to say something else but she sat on the bed beside him, facing him and putting her hand on his face “Rand I am scared. From the moment I fully understood what is going to happen I have been terrified. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I did what I have always done when I was scared, I sought you out. Our time together allowed me to focus less about my death and more about the life I still had. And I know it is unfair to you but please…just…” she leaned in and kissed him and said “I love you so much.” then leaned against his chest and wrapped her arms around him.

He held her tight and they both laid down on the bed, her face buried in his chest. “I love you Min I…” he thought for a long time about how to finish that sentence, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He was still trying to when his mind finally drifted off to some semblance of sleep, as Min did the same.

Perhaps sleep is not the best word to describe the state Rand was in. Semi-consciousness maybe does a better job. He was on some level aware that he was on a bed with his eyes closed, but if you asked him at that time he would have said he was suspended in darkness.

After a while, and there is no telling how long or short that while was, he started to notice that Min was moving away. The knot in his head that signified the Bond between the two of them started drifting away from him. At first his mind interpreted it as her taking a walk, going to get something, but at some point the Bond started getting farther and farther at a very high speed. His arms in the real world wrapped tighter around her, wanting to keep her with him, not wanting her to leave him. _Stay with me a while longer,_ He may or may not have said, _please, just a little longer, maybe I’ll come with you on that walk._ He held on tight but no matter how tightly he held her, she kept drifting away, farther and farther. A soft groan escaped her lips, bringing Rand out of the darkness he was floating in back into the real world to find Min’s Bond so faint despite her being in his arms.

“No. No…please don’t…please…”

It felt as if the Bond, the thing that stretched between the two of them was at its limit, as if Min was one step away from crossing into a place too far for the Bond to handle. A place where Rand can no longer be with her, in the way they have been constantly together for the past fifty years.

“Min…”

The Bond snapped.

Rand let out a loud wail. He sat up on the bed in the faint light of the dying lamps. He sat up and started shaking her.

_Please let this be another nightmare. Light knows I had plenty of those, why can’t this be another one?_

But it wasn’t, and he knew it.

 _I can bring her back. I will bring her back._ He got off the bed and kneeled beside her, thinking how it would be done. Opening himself to the Pattern, seeing all the Threads being Weaved, and seeing where Min’s stopped.

 _I can…I can do it. Yes, it can be done._ He studied what he could see, wanting to make sure no one will be hurt by his actions. _Min would not like that. Not at all. She is a good person that’s why I need to bring her back._ He reached up and grabbed hold of her hand, opening her fingers to find them closed around something. A piece of paper.

Rand raised an eyebrow as he straightened that paper and tried to read what it said, wondered for a second why he can’t see the writing before with barely a thought, all the lamps in the room started burning brighter than ever before. He wiped the tears in his eyes with his sleeve and started reading.

 

> You are thinking about bringing me back, aren’t you? See, I still know what you are thinking. Haha. To tell you the truth I did not always know what you were thinking. I just know you well enough and with the Bond it was not that difficult to make an educated guess. I was wrong sometimes, but when I was right you were so enchanted by it that you did not even notice the times I was wrong. Because it blew your mind. And I loved doing that, blowing your mind. I loved the look you gave me whenever I explained something to you or did something you did not think was possible. That look of wonder that told me that for an instant, you were feeling young again. Or at least I hope that is what it did.
> 
> But in this instant I do know what you are thinking because in a lot of ways you are predictable. We talked about this, people think helplessness in the face of death is a curse but the real curse as it turns out is having the ability to do something about it. Well I don’t want you to do something about it. I do not want you do something that will haunt you for the rest of your days, I do not want to be the one who opens this door you would rather stay closed. I do not want to be the one to force you to find an answer to a question you would rather remain unanswered.
> 
> I had my time. And I loved it, and it was a little better than it should have been thanks to you. And Elayne, and Aviendha. Mat, Moiraine, Egwene, Lan, Nynaeve. My teachers and my students and many, many more. It is time for me to leave. But like we said, things never truly go away. I am not truly gone. And one day, I wish on the Light and my hope for salvation and rebirth that we meet again.

 

Rand read the note a few times, how many he can never tell. Eventually he buried his head in the mattress, with her hand still in his, and he just cried. His anger at this…this betrayal by the Pattern was not abated, after all he done and…and this? He focused on another Thread, one that in some ways was far away but in others, was very close. One that had another Thread, a malicious, malignant one wrapping around it and sucking the life out of it. He focused on the malicious thread and the burned it more thoroughly than Balefire amplified by a thousand Chaodan kal ever could. It would not infect the original Thread or any other after that. Rand felt very powerful, and yet very helpless. His anger gave way to unbelievable sadness and he could do nothing but cry.

He was vaguely aware of the two Bonds remaining in his head suddenly becoming much closer, one after the other. As Elayne and Aviendha rushed into the room. He looked up and found Aviendha at the door, her hand covering her mouth. Elayne rushed towards him. He buried his face in her chest and let out another wail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I mean, it's not like you didn't see this coming. I tried to make some "foreshadowing" but as I read it it seemed pretty obvious to me.
> 
> I don't blame you if you hate me.


	16. Epilogue

_The Age of Champions, that is what many historians call the Third Age. Much like the Age of Legends that was known towards the end with wondrous advancement in all human fields; be it related or unrelated to the One Power, the Third Age was named for the Champions that rose towards the end of it. When the world called for heroes, they rose to the occasion._

_The Age of Champions it is called, because when the world presented a burden, they presented their shoulders for it to rest on. They carried it across the Last Battle, and they did a better job of it than the Age of Legends, they prevented the world from breaking. But some things in the world did break. Things needed fixing, the world needed great people to usher in the new Age. Another burden was presented and once again, the same champions propped their shoulders for it to rest on. One such pair of shoulders belonged to a fantastic woman, a woman whose legacy is one of knowledge and enlightenment, one who took it upon herself to dispel ignorance, to do away with the evil of superstition, and to shine the light of education where shadows of uncertainty dwelt. She fought long and hard to save the world and then fought longer and harder to make it a better place. Our Teacher, Min Farshaw. Her deeds will never be forgotten._

Ten year old Gunella read the epitaph written on the large plaque newly placed right inside the new auditorium in the school. Today, the day this auditorium was supposed to be first used for a lecture, a day that was supposed to be one of celebration, is instead one of mourning. Teacher Min Farshaw was dead, and her memoriam will be held in the same hall she should have been giving a lecture in, had this been a world where fairness existed.

She clutched the book _The Story behind Rock and Water,_ tightly to her chest. It was the book that sparked her curiosity for knowledge. It belonged to her mother and at a very young age Gunella had her mother read it to her, though she understood very little of it at the time she knew one thing, she wanted to understand the rest.

She hugged the book to her chest as she walked between the rows of seats. She was early, and no one else was there except a handful of people, most of them workers who were preparing the place for what is it o come. She walked to the very front row and was about to sit down but thought that important people always sat in the front row, it was probably reserved for someone more important than her. And probably so was the second and third rows. She walked to the fourth row and sat on the first chair at the aisle, hoping no one would ask her to leave.

She rested her chin on the book, which was big enough that it dug against her legs at the same time. For so long she had wanted nothing more than to study at the school of the great woman who wrote this great book. Her parents worked hard to send her here, pay for the school and her living expenses. Sadly her mother took sick last winter and her father could not come up with enough money on his own. Next rotation she will be going home. _Fairness did not exist in this world._

She had been in this school for a year. She met Teacher Min only once, she had lost her pen and a class was about to start and she was scrambling around trying to find someone who can lend her a pen. Of course pens are expensive and she’d have to find her old one again. She bumped into a lady while not looking where she was going, she told the lady she was looking for a pen and she gave her one, told her to keep it. It was after she took a few steps that she turned and said “You are teacher Farshaw, aren’t you?” the Teacher smiled at her and nodded and then urged her to hurry so she wouldn’t miss her class. Eventually Gunella found her pen, she tried to return the other one to Teacher, which was not easy, it wasn’t easy to find Teacher Min, busy as she was. Eventually she tried to send it with a member of the staff who brought it back with a note from the Teacher. _Keep it, and use it to make me proud._

The room was starting to fill up, though most of the people walking around failed to capture Gunella’s notice as she was lost in thought. There was a podium at the center of the stage, where a speaker can…well, speak. There were also a number of chairs arrayed behind the podium, one of the chairs, the one in the middle of them all, was bigger and a little more intricate than the rest.

People started walking onto the stage, taking the seats behind the podium, none took the larger one. Eventually all the seats were filled except that one and then a man, dressed in a red coat with the golden lion of Andor embroidered on his chest walked onto the stage from a side door and bellowed “By the grace of the Light I present to you the Defender of the Realm, Protector of her people, Queen Elayne of House Trakand of Andor.”

Gunella felt a shiver run through her. Queen Elayne Trakand! The hero of the Last Battle who faced down trollocs and Forsaken. The Warrior Queen was here! She walked onto the stage and faced the crowd who were cheering for her for a moment then walked to the middle seat. In the one right next to her sat a woman dressed in Aiel clothes and necklaces, that must be….Aviendha of the Tardaad Aiel. Gunella was getting very excited, until she glanced up at the portrait hanging on the wall behind the Queen, and then she was sad again.

A man, a very old man walked onto the stage, unannounced. He walked with a strange looking cane which looked like a sapling from a tree. He did not lean on it very much as he walked towards the podium. He gave the Queen a quick bow before facing the audience. He wore a long blue coat and he looked sadder than anyone on that stage, sadder than anyone Gunella has ever seen in her life.

“I uh…” as he spoke his voice did not carry well and he coughed, which came out much louder to the room. He turned around and thanked someone behind him and then turned back. “Some of you have seen me before with the Teacher. Others…most of you, probably have never seen me before. My name is…not important. What is important is that I had the privilege of being a very close friend to Teacher Min Farshaw for a very long time.” He looked down at his hands and continued “I knew her as well as anyone can know another person, or at least I hope so I…I guess,” he paused again then said “I guess I should have prepared a speech. I was never very good with words. She is…was, very good. She was like a candle lit in a dark room. Not only did she make everything brighter, but all eyes were always on her. And I loved being in her shadows.”

Gunella was crying, hard. She clutched the book tightly to her chest as she watched the man on the stage. His gaze swept across the audience, then suddenly his eyes went back to her. He made eye contact with her, and for a moment she felt a deep connection with this man she had never seen before, then his eyes left hers. Of course she knew it was all in her head, a man who was actually friends with Teacher would never bother even look at her, she was no one important.

“I was never a scholar. Which makes it even more strange that the Teacher chose me to travel with her while writing her latest…her last book, but I…” he paused again then coughed and said “I will be brief, because like I said I am not good with words, because Min’s memory deserves better than this rambling old fool, and because I want to let people who can actually talk…talk.”

At that point she heard footsteps coming up from behind her. She looked up and a man was walking towards the stage. She saw him while he was just passing her so she couldn’t see his face. He wore a brown coat and a matching wide brim hat. He went over and stood to the right side of the stage near the stairs. The speaker eyed him for a few moments then continued.

“Like I said, I knew Min, and I knew her wish for the world. If you care about her, if you wish to honor her memory, then try to take to heart what I am about to tell you; never shy from asking questions, it is the mission of a scholar to find the questions first before seeking their answers. Never relent in the pursuit of knowledge, and always be diligent. Do not let deeply held opinions sway you from an answer that goes against them. And above all, love each other because it is only through working together that the Light can be brought to every corner, where the Shadow of ignorance can be found.” He sighed and then stood straight and said “Thank you for coming out her to honor the memory of Teacher Min Farshaw. I know she would have been very happy to see you all here today.”

He bowed slightly towards the audience then walked to the right side of the stage. An elderly woman, another teacher in the school, Mistress Lor, rose to take his place at the podium and started speaking, but Gunella could not take her eyes off the man. He waved a young man who rose and offered him his seat away and descended the steps, getting off the stage.

He and the man in the hat hugged for a few moments before exchanging a few words and apparently coming to a decision to leave. They started walking up the aisle, Gunella staring at them, until they were right next to her seat when the man who spoke on the stage said “just a moment Mat.” He then turned and kneeled right next to Gunella’s chair and spoke very gently “That is a very good book, one of Teacher Min’s earliest writings. Have you read it?” he gave her a very sad smile.

For some reason the man felt familiar, even though she never saw him before today. She nodded and said “Yes. Many times. It is my mother’s.”

“Why are you crying?” he asked softly, and as if on prompt, she raised on hand to wipe her tears with her sleeve.

“I never got to attend one of her lessons. Now I never will.”

The man’s lips trembled for a moment. Suddenly she felt a tingling sensation on the top of her head that lasted very briefly that she immediately dismissed it when the man spoke again “You are Gunella, right?”

She was shocked “How did you know?”

“Min…the Teacher spoke to me about you.” the man said with a smile “You still have her pen?”

She nodded enthusiastically “Yes! In my room. Locked away safely so I won’t lose it. Teacher really talked about me?”

“Oh yes, she said you were very exceptional. You show great promise and she decided to waive all your tuition fees. And the school will handle all your living expenses until you get all the education you need.”

“What…?” Gunella was lost for words “Are you…are you serious?”

“Yes of course. The Teacher was very impressed with you. She thought you will be great one day.”

Gunella felt fresh tears sliding down her cheeks. She put the book carefully beside her on the chair before standing up and throwing her arms around the man’s neck. He seemed stunned for a moment then wrapped his own arms around her. She could feel him shudder slightly before he started pushing her off him “I apologize dear but…my knees can’t handle much more kneeling.” they pulled apart and he gestured to the man standing behind him “Do you know who that is?”

She looked up at him for a moment and her eyes widened. Wide brimmed hat, an eyepatch and a silver fox medallion. “That’s Mat Cauthon!” she whispered excitedly.

The great captain of the Last Battle gave her a little wave and said “Hey.”

The old man said “You can call me Tamlin. We are actually going out for a while, but we will be back soon. It was very nice to meet Gunella.”

She smiled and said “Goodbye Master Tamlin.” He smiled at her and turned and along with Mat Cauthon started walking towards the door.

She stood there watching them. Half way a third man joined them. Nearly as tall as Mat Cauthon but twice as wide. He had a silver beard and his hair was mostly silver too. Perrin Goldeneyes!

The last she saw of them were all three men, with their backs to her, silhouetted against the light from outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know it doesn't make sense for Rand to leave Min's memorial service, but I really wanted that shot of the Taveren Trio walking out together. 
> 
> If you read this far (and I doubt many will, it is a long fic) please let me know what you think, whether you liked it or not. And thank you so much for reading.


End file.
